Sitka Assembly begins review Tuesday of plan to rezone six historic cemeteries

The Sitka Assembly takes a first reading Tuesday, Nov. 10, on an ordinance from Municipal Administrator John Leach that would move six historic cemeteries from residential and public-lands zoning into the Cemetery District. A second reading and final vote are scheduled for Nov. 24.

The city created the Cemetery District in 2019 to protect burial grounds from redevelopment that could disturb remains, according to a Planning Department memo. The memo calls the current zoning "more permissive." An earlier staff report calls such disturbance "unlikely" given state and federal regulations, but says "similar disinterment has occurred within the city and borough in the near-distant past."

The Russian Orthodox and Lutheran cemeteries are zoned R-1, single-family and duplex residential. The state-owned Old City and Pioneer cemeteries and the city-owned Moose Cemetery are zoned P, public lands, according to the city's cemetery maps. Also covered are Sitka National Cemetery, run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and Sitka Memorial Park Cemetery, run by the Sitka Cemetery Association. The ordinance text counts seven properties in all.

The city proposed the rezoning in October. The Historic Preservation Commission recommended it 6-0 on Oct. 14, and the Planning Commission recommended it 4-0 on Oct. 21, according to its minutes.

The memo says the ordinance includes only properties whose owners supported it or did not object. The state Department of Natural Resources did not object to rezoning the Old City Cemetery but said in an August 2025 letter that it would keep "the ability to authorize other land use if determined to be in the best interest of the State." Duane Mendenhall, the national cemetery's director, wrote that month that the cemetery "is federal and local zoning or re-zoning categories and restrictions do not apply to us."

The Orthodox Diocese of Sitka & Alaska asked to keep current zoning at its parsonage on Marine Street. Neither the parsonage nor any property owned by ANB, which did not respond to the city, is in the ordinance.

The memo calls the rezoning a gesture of respect toward everyone interred. It says local stakeholders and tribal citizens identified protecting the remains of Sitka's Indigenous residents as of particular interest.