Ithaca City Cemetery Vaults

I ran across an interesting article in the Cornell Daily Sun the other day which led me to ponder several questions about the long term maintenance of vaults, columbariums, and mausoleums in cemeteries.

The article is very interesting and, quite frankly, tells of the city of Ithaca’s quest to understand what must be done to maintain the structural integrity of the hillside vaults that have been in place more than 150 years.  To the city’s credit, they understand the cultural and historical value of the cemetery in the city’s history, but also understand that it may take quite an investment to shore up the 12 vaults in question so that they don’t collapse.

The 16 acre cemetery parcel, known as the Ithaca City Cemetery, is the second largest contiguous green space in the city and has been owned by the city since 1888.  The article mentions that the cemetery has been in existence since 1790.  The cemetery is surrounded by Cornell University and is often times used as a path from one end of campus to another.

Interestingly enough, the city is commissioning the vault assessment and getting greater understanding of what must be done by lowering “Go Pro” type cameras into the vaults to get a picture of the structural integrity from the inside.  The intention is to get better data to understand which vaults need to be fortified first.

Funeral Director Daily take:  Reading this article brings up a lot of potential issues that cemeteries may have as we move ahead.  Not too long ago a friend of mine in the industry in Minnesota told of his small town mausoleum that was deteriorating so bad that the bodies had to be removed and buried.  Think about that — the cemetery had to provide grave lots, dig graves, purchase vaults, move the casketed remains from the mausoleum into the vaults and then place them  in the graves.  In addition, they then had to purchase some type of monument/marker for the grave to identify the deceased.  While they maybe had some remuneration from family members who wanted the bodies moved because of the mausoleum condition, in some instances I’m guessing that family members could not be located after all the years that had passed.  Depending on the number of bodies in the mausoleum this had to be an immense expense to the cemetery.

So — my question is — is this situation waiting to happen at cemeteries all over the country?  How long are concrete mausoleums/columbariums supposed to last?  I don’t know the answer to this question but it reminds me of the issue regarding how long small airplane manufacturers have to carry liability insurance on their products to cover product liability — some times parts fail long after the purchase of the plane has been purchased — and long-term  liability insurance is one of the major costs of the small airplane manufacturing business..

In the case of the Ithaca City Cemetery they have the taxing power of a municipality to fall back on if needed.  What about small cemetery associations and private cemeteries.  Much like insurance companies are regulated to make sure that they have the assets to pay future claims, do we know that our cemeteries have the ability to cover deferred maintenance?  Most cemeteries have perpetual care funds for things like mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges, moving snow, but what about potential big ticket items?  I think that this is something we will hear more about as we move forward.[wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]