One of the issues that I have seen growing bigger and bigger in just the last couple of years is how association owned cemeteries can continue to make budgets in the wake of the direct cremation with no burial environment.

It seems to me that more and more articles are popping up from all over the country concerning neglected cemeteries that just don’t have the resources to operate in the wake of no longer selling many burial lots and performing interments.

I came across a couple of these articles recently and wanted to share them with readers – especially those who own funeral homes in rural America – where a big part of this problem is occurring.  My hope is that rural funeral directors can get out front ahead of the potential problems in their particular area and visit with municipal officials to see what can be done.

The first article that you can read here comes from an ad hoc cemetery commission set up in White River Junction, Vermont, to explore the issues with the community’s 16 cemeteries.  According to the article, under Vermont statute, municipal governments assume responsibility for cemeteries if they’re not otherwise maintained, a reality the commission said the town should be prepared to take on fully within the next five years.

Here, according to the article, are some of the issues the commission discovered that the town will face if this becomes a reality:

• One large cemetery had a seasonal bill for $24,000 for mowing and trimming
• Annual projected expense costs for the 16 cemeteries would be about $179,360
• Non-municipal revenue is limited by the fact that only the interest for the endowments attached to the associations is accessible.
• Lot sales are trending downward as, according to the commissions findings, only 14% of those surveyed intended to have an earth burial.

The commission was also concerned about cemetery records.  Records are somewhat haphazard, but the commission worries that once the municipality takes over that people will have a reasonable expectation that they can be inspected.

Ken Parker, a member of the ad hoc commission said, “These are immediate problems for us and not ones we can kick down the road any further.  We’ve been able to forestall the inevitable, but the inevitable is here now.”

Related:  This article came out the same day and deals with a cemetery in Augusta, Georgia.  Cemeteries there fall under the parks and recreation department but a check found that the resources allotted for cemeteries has gone down.  One family commented that they had to go out and mow the grass weekly because no one from the city had done it.

Funeral Director Daily take:  I live in what’s termed “Greater Minnesota”.  It is the area outside the metropolitan Minneapolis-St. Paul area and I can attest to these issues happening in our cemeteries.  Some of the small, rural churches no longer have active membership and the cemeteries are being kept up by the older retired people in the area.  In some cases, some larger churches – many of the same denominations as the closed churches – have stepped up and cared for these cemeteries in our area.

Some of the larger association cemeteries — even those with a $300,000 endowment – only generate about 4% on the endowment.  And $12,000 is not much to keep up a large cemetery when you are in the day of almost $15 an hour minimum wage for lawn mowing and snow plowing.  That doesn’t take into consideration equipment that has to be maintained or the charges for such services if the cemetery does not have its own equipment.

America has evolved in the way we care for our dead.  If Vermont is the canary in the coal mine and we move to a 14% earth burial rate, association cemeteries that have long functioned by the sale of lots and interment charges will have a hard time raising revenue to maintain themselves.  I think funeral directors really need to be aware of this cemetery dilemma and, especially in small communities, be leaders on what happens next.

Finally, the other option is for cemeteries to be pro-active and find a way to convince cremation families to inter their ashes, scatter in memorial gardens with plaques, or build columbaria to be re-sold.  It is a risk, but bringing in revenue would solve the problems.

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