Trees must be replanted, putting the kibosh on plans to add more burial plots.

The Port Blakely Cemetery board has been ordered by the city to replant an illegally logged 3-acre plot – and leave it that way for at least six years.

The nonprofit cemetery board was found last week to have willfully ordered the clear-cut of the cemetery expansion site off Old Mill Road, violating the board’s own clearing permits, city code and state law, city officials said.

The clearing, which was conducted last September, was to have expanded the cemetery from three to nearly six acres. The re-grading of the lot and the spilling of several thousand yards of fill dirt was also judged by the city to be improper.

City Code Enforcement Officer Meghan McKnight said the contract between the cemetery board and Lee Rosenbaum, who owns Bainbridge Landscaping and Topsoil, shows the board’s “apparent desire and intent…to remove trees far in excess of what was permitted.”

McKnight, in a letter to the board, also said that the agreement “provides that Mr. Rosenbaum was to remove all trees from the site, including all Douglas firs within the buffer.”

The board ran into trouble with the city in September when it was discovered that Rosenbaum had cut trees in a 20-foot-wide protected buffer area, and had removed healthy trees in addition to the dead and dying ones allowed under the permit. The city is still assessing the number of trees removed from the site.

Board member Arnie Jackson on Monday said the board had indeed asked Rosenbaum to clear the land beyond what was allowed by the city.

“We do have paperwork to that effect,” Jackson said. “But when you’re building a cemetery, you have to clear all the land. You can’t leave trees in.”

The assertion that the issue was centered on poorly processed paperwork appears to have been expressed frequently by the board. In her letter to board member Norman C. Davis, McKnight took issue with that view.

“The clearing and placement of fill on this property without necessary permits is more than ‘a paperwork problem,’” she wrote, stressing that the permitting process allows city staff to assess proposed developments and help residents avoid consequences that the board now faces.

Rosenbaum, who logged the site, said in September that the trees were cleared in accordance with city rules and that nearly every tree on the site was diseased or dying.

No money was exchanged between the board and Rosenbaum. Instead, the board gave Rosenbaum permission to sell the felled trees to recoup labor and other expenses.

Jackson said the city’s ruling means the cemetery cannot sell new plots.

“This means we can’t build our cemetery,” he said. “Saying we can’t touch the land for six years is ridiculous.”

While admitting the board failed to obtain the proper permits, Jackson said the cleared land’s location, tucked beyond view from roads and on a hillside, should have elicited no cause for complaints.

“A mistake was made in paperwork,” he said. “It’s no big deal. It doesn’t bother anybody. The situation is that people on this island are ridiculous if they want this moratorium.”

The board purchased the forested property from the IslandWood learning center to nearly double the size of the existing cemetery. The expansion plans were announced in early 2005.

Established in the late 1800s, the cemetery initially served the workers employed at the Port Blakely Mill. More than 1,210 people are buried there.