State officials need extra time to complete the financial audit of a Lawrence cemetery that has been criticized for allowing grass to grow so long that tombstones are obscured.

“Typically, audits do not take this long,” said Jesse Borjon, a spokesman for the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office, which is auditing Lawrence Memorial Park Cemetery, 1517 E. 15th St.

The grave plaque of Jerry Cares is hidden by dead grass at Lawrence Memorial Park Cemetery in this August 2004 file photo. Since complaints were made about the cemetery's upkeep, an employee of Mike Graham & Associates, the firm that owns the cemetery, said he came out to improve the area's condition.

But Borjon wouldn’t say why the audit was taking so long.

“The audit is not complete,” he said. “It continues to go on. We are working to get it completed as soon as possible.”

Last month, two dozen Lawrence residents complained to the Journal-World that the cemetery was poorly maintained. The criticisms emerged after vandalism at the cemetery sparked relatives to check the condition of family graves there.

Randall Davis, an Arkansas-based district operations manager for Houston-based Mike Graham & Associates, the firm that owns the cemetery, did not return a call Monday seeking comment about the audit.

But earlier in the day, he said he recently visited Lawrence to get the cemetery in satisfactory shape.

“I just spent three weeks up there at Lawrence,” Davis said by phone. “I personally mowed the cemetery. I didn’t see that the (burial) plots looked that bad.”

Marilyn Bray, one of the critics, on Monday conceded that conditions at Memorial Park had improved in recent weeks.

Bray said she talked with Davis on Monday afternoon. She has numerous relatives buried at the cemetery, including her late husband, Alan.

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“I did thank him for cleaning it up,” Bray said of her conversation with Davis. “And I just expressed concern that I figured that this was a Band-Aid on a major problem that keeps bleeding.”

When the complaints became public, state officials said they would conduct an audit — required for every cemetery every few years — to determine whether officials are complying with state laws requiring cemeteries to spend money made from the sale of burial plots on maintenance.

Officials said no cemetery had been prosecuted under the law, which has no guidelines on what constitutes an adequate level of spending.

Davis said he did not think Memorial Park Cemetery was as badly maintained as the relatives suggested. He said he hired a new full-time employee to staff the cemetery office. Critics had said they had difficulty finding anybody connected with the cemetery to take complaints.

“I feel we’re certainly addressing all of the problems,” he said. “Anybody who has concerns, feel free to give them my phone number.”

He added: “I’ll be the first to admit there’s always room for improvement.”