A follow up to a story posted here in November: A Dakota County District Court Judge has ordered Castle Rock Township to issue a conditional use permit for an Islamic cemetery.
Agstar Financial Services submitted an application to the township in March 2014 for a proposed Islamic cemetery and funeral home on property it owned. In June 2014, Castle Rock Township’s planning commission recommended the approval of the application without the plan to build a funeral home on the property; however, the Castle Rock Township board rejected the application in August 2014, expressing concerns of potential loss of a “lot of tax base” and that the property “would not be open to the public for burials.”
When Al Maghfirah Cemetery Association closed on the sale of the property with Agstar, it submitted its own conditional use permit to the township on Nov. 17, 2014, and agreed not to build a funeral home on the property, but three days later, the board of Castle Rock Township denied Al Maghfirah Cemetery Association’s application.
The Dakota County District Court Judge wrote that he wrote that Al Maghfirah Cemetery Association “is entitled to free use of its property, subject to reasonable zoning restrictions….That right was denied to them by the arbitrary decision of the Castle Rock Township Board of Supervisors, which was later framed as a concern over the loss of tax base.”
The full Minnesota Public Radio article is here
