Mrs Asgill was among 1300 people who signed a petition in a bid to stop council from disposing of all non-standard containers, statues, figurines and toys placed on gravesites at the Wagga Lawn Cemetery. As a result of that petition, council has drafted a new policy that outlines what can and can't be left at gravesites and in what manner they can be left, but Mrs Asgill believes elements of the policy are unreasonable.

"It says that items can only be left on the plaque, not the concrete border, and for us that would be just impossible to do," she said.

"The mayor's seen what we do with my father's grave and he's agreed with that - if we can leave ceramic items on the cement we'll be happy." The draft policy goes on exhibition for 28 days as of today and Councillor Geale encouraged people to enter submissions, negative or positive, to assist council to gauge the mood of the community.

If there are overwhelming numbers of submissions taking issue with the policy in a similar way to Mrs Asgill, he says there is scope for it to be changed.

"We need to find out what the community wants - that's what exhibition periods are for," Cr Geale said. "There's no reason we can't be unique but there has to be a community wish for that and occupational health and safety issues for staff at the cemetery have to be considered."

Mrs Asgill agreed the community needed to meet council halfway, seeing good reason why items such as beer bottles and decorative items that could be blown around by the wind were of concern.

But Dave Rutland, another ratepayer with loved ones buried at the cemetery, said there needed to be some room to honour the character of those buried.

"We've got to be able to reflect on what people loved about their lives and decorate graves with things that would make them happy."