Back on January 12 Funeral Director Daily brought you a story, that you can read here, about the South Dakota Veteran’s Council making its only priority for the 2018 legislation session a state owned and operated cemetery in the Sioux Falls area.  The only veteran’s cemetery in the state is the Fort Meade Cemetery near Sturgis — 350 miles away from South Dakota’s population base in Sioux Falls.

In this update, which you can read about here, we understand that the cemetery is caught up in the appropriations bill in the legislature at this time.  The issue, as we understand it, is not about the $600,000 asked for by the veterans’ group for designing and planning the cemetery, but for how the state will finance the operation of the cemetery in the future.

According to the article, the Fort Meade National Cemetery has 19 full-time staff plus seasonal help.  The state cemetery’s financial plan is figured with only four full-time employees and shows annual operating deficits from a loss of potentially $76,000 to a loss of $472,000.  One legislator  has proposed a one-time funding of an endowment of $9.4 million that would permanently  fund the operations of the cemetery.

Funeral Director Daily:  Don’t get me wrong, I’m one who loves our National Cemeteries and gets goose-bumps every time I hear taps at a service for one of our hero dead.  However, one has to ask himself, does Fort Meade really have 19 full-time employees?  This is a National Cemetery that would not have a sales staff.

I’m pretty conservative in everything that I do.  Maybe it is time to have a look at the National Cemetery operations and see if private cemetery operators would have an idea on how the federal government can save some money on such.