The Seneca County Board of Supervisors recently heard a proposal from Sampson Veterans Memorial Cemetery general manager William Yale about the possibility of adding a crematory to increase revenue to the cemetery in the future.  You can read about this proposal in the article here from the Olean Times Herald.

According to the article this 362 acre county cemetery was started in 2011 with an appropriation from the State of New York and then turned over to the county for operation and maintenance.  It was started with state funds in order to give area veterans an opportunity to be buried close to where they lived.  The county, through their Industrial Development Agency (IDA) has  promised an operating subsidy of $100,000 per year through 2019.

According to cemetery manager Yale the cemetery is not self-sustaining yet.  “I was thinking that if we have to look for new revenue generation, we might want to look at cremation, ” Yale is quoted as saying to the supervisors.  Yale continued, ” If we did it (cremation) at Sampson, it would be a big revenue generator and meet a need, especially if we open it up for all families, not just those whose loved ones qualify for burial at Sampson as honorary discharged veterans, their spouse, or dependent family members.”

The article also mentioned that there are crematoriums in nearby Rochester, Cortland, and Dryden.

The article closed by noting that the consensus of the supervisors was to pursue the idea.

Funeral Director Daily:  While I don’t pretend to know the entire story of the Sampson Veterans Memorial Cemetery, this idea of putting a crematory on the property and then reaching out for the business of the general public does not seem to bode well for those in the death care private enterprise in the area.

Think about it.  . for whatever reason, the State of New York financed a county veteran’s cemetery.  While there evidently was some thought put into the operational cost, as evidenced by the eight year $100,000 stipend, it appears that the long-range financial viability of the project was a bit off as they are predicting that they will not be able to cash-flow the operations.  So to remedy that – the cemetery management believes that they should go into competition against the current crematory operators – not only for veteran services, but the general public as well.

So now, a facility that was built with tax dollars and operates with a tax subsidy is thinking about going into competition in the cremation business against the very taxpayers, for-profit funeral businesses, that generate some of those tax dollars.  It would be sad if the death care businesses generate taxes that are in part used to compete against themselves.

If this happens, then local funeral establishments should ask for a discount on the taxes they are paying so as not to finance their competition.

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