At the Key West Cemetery, This Fall's Decisions Are All About the Ground

Eight roads in the southwest quarter of the Key West Cemetery are still dirt. City engineering staff call them "highly compacted," which is a fair description of a surface that more than a century of visitors, hearses and work crews have pressed down. A paving proposal for those eight roads was placed on the City Commission's Nov. 5 agenda. The mayor's newly reconstituted cemetery committee had its first meeting scheduled for the day before. A decision on two giant strangler figs whose roots wrap around early-1900s graves has been postponed indefinitely.

All three items come down to the same question. Every decision the city has in front of it at the cemetery right now is about the soil: who is allowed to dig in it, which roots are allowed to keep pushing through it, and how much of it gets covered with asphalt. For The Meadows, which sits beside the cemetery, the answers will shape how the oldest landscape in the area looks and holds up over the next few years.

The Digging Came First

This round of attention goes back to 2025. In a December 2025 report, Keys Weekly described two separate times that year when bones were found exposed at a grave plot. City spokeswoman Alyson Crean told the paper the state investigation had closed with no findings against the cemetery.

The same report covered the city's first response, and it was about the ground. Commissioner Monica Haskell said the city had bought ground-penetrating radar and other equipment to help locate burials, and that she planned to ask commissioners to revisit the cemetery ordinances. A cemetery revitalization committee was announced at the same time, with historians Cori Convertito and Clinton Curry involved and a first meeting set for Dec. 17, 2025.

Ground-penetrating radar is used to locate burials underground before anyone disturbs them.

The Mayor Put Digging Rules on the Table

This fall the issue moved into the mayor's office. Mayor Sam Kaufman called the cemetery one of his office's highest priorities at a recent press conference, as the Key West Citizen reported. He said he had reconstituted the Mayor's Cemetery Committee and scheduled its first meeting for Nov. 4.

He also asked the City Attorney's Office to review the city's cemetery ordinances. His stated goal is to bring them more in line with state law, so that procedures are followed strictly in two situations: when crews dig, and when graves are declared abandoned. Both are rules about the ground. One decides how the soil gets opened. The other decides when a plot is treated as no longer cared for.

The Citizen quoted him directly:

"It is completely unacceptable. I don't accept it under any set of excuses where bones are laid open for the public to see. These are our ancestors. These are our family members. If you're digging and you don't know if there's a grave there, you better have the experts on scene to be able to make sure that it's done appropriately, legally, ethically and morally. No excuses."

His standard is a specific one. Wherever there is doubt about what lies underneath, experts should be on site before anyone digs. Each of the other items on the cemetery list touches that same ground.

Two Fig Trees That Are Already Digging

Strangler figs do their own digging, slowly. City urban foresters asked to remove two of them from the cemetery. They cited disruption to burial sites and the risk that the roots could break into sealed caskets and affect groundwater, the Key West Citizen reported. The trees are large. The foresters' report gave their trunk diameters as 96 inches and 53 inches, and a photo in the Citizen's earlier coverage shows one fig's roots surrounding graves from the early 1900s.

The residents who spoke at the Tree Commission looked at the same ground and reached a different conclusion. They raised concerns about historic preservation, about the possibility that removing the trees would disturb graves on its own, and about whether families of the people buried nearby would be notified. Later speakers argued for keeping the shade canopy and trying pruning first.

Both sides are concerned about the graves. They disagree on whether the bigger risk comes from roots that are already in place or from the work it would take to pull them out. The item was postponed at a Dec. 9 meeting and moved to February 17, 2026. Staff then asked for an indefinite postponement, and the February meeting went no further than confirming it. Both figs are still standing.

Paving Eight Dirt Roads

The paving item puts the most money into the ground of anything on the list. Legistar file 26-6031 was created on Oct. 16, 2026, and placed on the Nov. 5 City Commission agenda. It is a task order for $235,051.30 to Charley Toppino & Sons, Inc. to pave roads inside the cemetery.

Here is what the engineering cover memo from Senior Construction Manager Eric Augst and the contractor's proposal lay out:

The memo notes that the Toppino contract was set up to handle ongoing roadway paving, sidewalk additions, shoulder reconstruction and striping on a task-order basis. That puts the cemetery lanes in the same category of work as a city street. For anyone who walks those lanes, the change would be practical. Smooth asphalt is easier for a wheelchair, a stroller or an older visitor on a cane than rutted dirt.

The same table also shows why paving belongs on the list of ground decisions. The proposal calls for reworking the limerock base up to six inches deep. The city now owns ground-penetrating radar, and the mayor has said that "if you're digging and you don't know if there's a grave there," experts should be present. Road work in a historic burial ground falls under that same standard.

How the Pieces Fit

Each item answers part of the same question:

1. Digging rules. The ordinance review Kaufman requested is about how crews open the ground and when a grave can be called abandoned.
2. Roots. The fig decision is about whether the bigger risk to old graves comes from living trees or from removing them.
3. Pavement. The task order is about how much of the cemetery's dirt becomes a finished surface, and what happens a few inches down while that work is done.

The reconstituted Mayor's Cemetery Committee, with its first meeting scheduled for Nov. 4, is the one body positioned to look across all three. The 2025 revitalization committee brought historians to the table, and the mayor's committee now gives people who know the cemetery's history a place to weigh in on how its ground is handled.

Walking It Yourself

Seeing it in person is the easiest way to follow all of this. The Historic Florida Keys Foundation offers walking tours of the cemetery twice a week, and reservations go through its office at 305-292-6718.

The foundation's history of the cemetery identifies landmarks a walk can include: the USS Maine Plot, dedicated in 1900; Los Martires de Cuba; the historic Catholic section; and the Jewish sections. For orientation, a 2023 city notice for a cemetery stroll sent visitors in through the Windsor and Frances Street gates.

The city's next decisions are about the dirt lanes in the southwest quadrant and the big figs with roots wrapped around nearby headstones.

If you own a home in The Meadows and want to understand how changes at the cemetery next door figure into your property's story, I'm glad to walk you through it. Living next to one of Key West's oldest landscapes is part of what defines this neighborhood, and Lori Langton keeps a close eye on what happens there. Schedule a free consultation and let's talk.