Watt Hopeful On Cemetery Expansion

BY WESLEY YOUNG
SALISBURY POST

If Rowan County Commissioner Newton Cohen and U.S. Rep. Mel Watt (D-12th) agree on National Cemetery expansion, it must be a bipartisan effort.

Cohen, a conservative Republican, and Watt, a liberal Democrat, were laughing and shaking hands Tuesday after a luncheon at the Rowan County Vocational Workshop.

Watt promised full support for expanding Salisbury's National Cemetery and keeping it open past an anticipated closing date this fall. And county officials presented their ideas to overcome difficulties that cropped up last year, when a plan emerged to expand the cemetery onto land now owned by the Workshop.

Plans call for the three-way deal to work like this: The federal Department of Veterans Affairs would buy the Workshop property, giving the cemetery 4.4 extra acres and nine more years of burial space. Meanwhile, the Workshop would move to the site now occupied by the Rowan County Health Department on Old Concord Road, after that department relocates to a building under renovation on East Innes Street.

Watt told an audience of veterans, Workshop representatives and Salisbury and Rowan County officials that efforts will go forward to make sure both North Carolina senators and all the congressmen from the central Piedmont are backing the plan to expand the cemetery. The goal, Watt said, is to make sure the project is in the budget on both the House and Senate sides of Congress.

But Watt said the Department of Veterans Affairs was itself only ''lukewarm'' to the idea, because the focus has been towards the creation of state cemeteries, as opposed to national cemeteries, for veterans.

Watt doesn't want to try to change that policy, but simply make sure that the Salisbury cemetery gets the federal dollars to stay open.

''We need to let them know that this is a good idea, and that we are not trying to change overall policy,'' Watt said.

The congressman said last year's effort fell short because it was late in the budget year, and the county didn't have specific dollar amounts or solutions to problems like what to do about demolishing the Workshop buildings.

County Manager Tim Russell rose during the lunch meeting to announce the county had come up with the numbers: It will take $293,750 for the government to buy the Workshop property, and another $600,000 to prepare the site for expansion of the cemetery.

The price for the Workshop property is its tax value.

Russell said the county stands ready to donate $40,000 towards the demolition costs, with the Veteran's Council of Rowan County raising the other $25,000 needed to give the cemetery a clean expansion site.

Because the deal could not get through Congress before the anticipated closing date of the cemetery, the Workshop has agreed to deed vacant land on the property to the cemetery this spring, if it looks like Congress will back the expansion plan. That would allow the cemetery to keep operating long enough for the rest of the deal to clear Congress.

''We hope these ... things will clear up any concerns that the Department of Veterans Affairs will have to acquire the property,'' Russell said.

Marcelle Williams, speaking for the veterans, thanked Watt for helping not only on the cemetery project, but on a plan to create a veterans' rest home on the VA Medical Center property.

As the meeting broke up, Cohen shook Watt's hand and alluded to his son Jim Cohen's congressional ambitions. Cohen tried to get the GOP nomination for the 12th District race in 1998, but lost to Scott Keadle, who was defeated in November.

''Don't hold it against me that my son is wanting your job,'' Cohen quipped.