LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Mayor Craig Greenberg said Tuesday his administration plans to work with Attorney General Russell Coleman's office to seek a "good, long-term solution" to maintain three abandoned Louisville cemeteries.

Greenberg, who was visiting a volunteer cleanup at Schardein Cemetery in the Taylor Berry neighborhood, said he'd like to find a resolution quickly. But he cautioned that it's a "complicated matter."   

"I think the big question is: 'Where do the funds come from to pay for this in perpetuity?'" Greenberg said. "Because the cemetery will be here forever. We want to care for it to forever, make sure that the grass stays mowed and that the weeds stay trimmed, etc."

Besides identifying funding, Greenberg said, there are other liability issues that need to be ironed out.

Long-simmering issues at Schardein, Eastern and Greenwood cemeteries are under new scrutiny following WDRB News reporting that revealed unspent money for their care and no one managing a spending account. 

Those properties were owned by the Louisville Crematory and Cemeteries Co., which dissolved into bankruptcy by the early 1990s after top executives were charged criminally for corpse abuse, grave desecration and failing to keep adequate funds in perpetual-care and maintenance trust accounts, according to Associated Press coverage at the time.

Investigators reportedly found as many as 48,000 bodies buried in graves in Eastern and Greenwood cemeteries that already were occupied. 

Since then, Jefferson County judges have overseen the properties' management, handling requests for volunteer maintenance work and reviewing how money from a trust fund is spent.

A WDRB News investigation in August found that no one has been overseeing that trust fund for years, while more than $43,000 for cemetery upkeep was sitting unspent in a deceased supervisor's bank account.

The Kentucky Attorney General's Office is responsible for picking a replacement for the previous supervisor, who ended his work in 2018 and died in 2023. In 2019, then-Attorney General Andy Beshear's office told a judge it was "diligently working" to find a successor.

That didn't happen under Beshear, a Democrat who is now Kentucky's governor, or under the next attorney general, Republican Daniel Cameron.

GOP Attorney General Coleman's office has pledged to develop a plan before a Nov. 1 court conference.

Planet Fitness and Trees Louisville organized the cleanup at Schardein Cemetery. Volunteers cleaned headstones, raked mowed grass, cut down tree limbs and hauled trash out of the graveyard.

Metro Council member Shameka Parrish-Wright, D-3, whose district includes the cemetery, also was among those volunteering.  

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