Spangle Cemetery board asks community for levy funding

The Spangle Cemetery District is asking residents to pass a tax levy in the Nov. 4 election to supplement landscaping and maintenance costs.

The board is seeking $20,000, according to the proposal, equating to around 20 cents in tax per $1,000 in assessed property value for 2026.

Secretary Robert Sievers said that the Spangle Cemetery receives around $10,000 in funding each year. Mowing the lawn on the 11-acre plot alone can cost anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 a year.

“The commissioners, and there’s one other person and myself – none of us take a paycheck. None of us get to take a dollar,” Sievers said. “We don’t want – these are our neighbors – we don’t want their money. We’re just volunteering to help do this kind of stuff. There is no money there.”

Every two years, the cemetery gets their books audited by the state – an additional roughly $1,000 cost, Sievers said.

“That really bothers all of us around here because we’re doing the best we can,” he said. “There’s such a small budget and trying to minimize – we don’t want to tax people. I don’t want to tax anybody. So, it’s very frustrating.”

Sievers said that the district typically asks for a levy of the same amount around every four years, but 2025 is asking only a year after the previous levy passed. Lightning strikes, well drilling and other expensive events have taken place in the past few years, creating a deficit, he said.

“We had to drill a well – well, that’s 20 grand when your budget is 10. What are you supposed to do?”

If approved, Sievers said the district shouldn’t be asking for a levy again until 2029.

Sievers has lived in Spangle since he was 12 years old and has been the cemetery’s secretary for a dozen years.

“I’ve got one set of great grandparents, both my parents and brother are buried here. I’ll be buried here. The three commissioners, two of them, their entire families are buried here,” Sievers said. “I mean, there’s some awful looking cemeteries within 20 miles of here, and there’s some really good looking cemeteries – but the awful ones, I feel sorry for the people, relatives, whatever.”

With so many of their own buried there, Spangle residents have always supported the cemetery, Sievers said, so he isn’t worried that the levy won’t pass.

“It just costs so much money to maintain an area this large, and we’ve had some terrible things happen like the lightning strike five or six years ago,” he said. “We asked the taxpayers to pay a little bit. It’s a couple cents per thousand – it’s not a lot of money – and they have every time we’ve asked for money except for about 15 years ago.”

The election is on Nov. 4.