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In a split vote, the Pleasanton City Council last week approved staff’s recommendation to pause casket burial services at the Pioneer Cemetery and only offer cremation services while the city updates how the cemetery is operated.
The goal with this and other administrative changes is to address the fact that the cemetery is costing the city more money than what it makes in revenue every year, staff said.
“What it’s doing is pausing casket burial sales which would allow us to not increase the liability to deliver those in the future while we figure out how to right-size the ship,” Mayor Jack Balch said in regards to the staff recommendation during the Aug. 19 council meeting. “I think that’s valuable.”
All previously approved casket burial agreements will still be honored.
According to City Manager Gerry Beaudin, the update to the cemetery has been in the works ever since the city first acquired the facility nearly 20 years ago. He said at that time, the cemetery had already been struggling financially and things have not improved since then.
Following the city’s latest budget development process, the staff sought out advice from L.F. Sloane Consultant Group in order to evaluate the operational needs and liabilities that come with the facility.
The consultant group specializes in cemetery management, business planning, operations, sales and anything else involving cemeteries.
Heidi Murphy, the city’s director of library and recreation services, and her team have also spent the last couple of years looking at the cemetery from an organization standpoint and evaluating different ways to better run the facility, which operates with a significant deficit every year.
According to last week’s presentation, in 2024 the cemetery made about $200,000 in revenues generated from both casket sales and cremation services. However, 60% of all sales were cremation services. In the same year, expenses for the facility totaled around $350,000.
About $300,000 of those expenses went to paying contractors that took care of maintaining the cemetery and carrying out the actual burial services.
After looking at the cemetery’s spending and operations, Stephanie Sloane — a representative from the consultant group — advised the council of staff’s recommendation for the cemetery’s operations moving forward: transitioning the facility into a community amenity service model.
“I think we’re bringing you a steady march forward of here are some significant improvements you can make over the next three years or so to get to a point where you are not losing money and subsidizing this,” Sloane said. “Once you’ve course corrected and right-sized, you can look at what’s the path forward for trying to create that long-term preservation strategy knowing that you do run out of space in a cemetery.”
Some of the significant improvements that were eventually approved by the majority council vote includes pausing new casketed burial sales, maintaining one to two cremation lot sales per month, limiting contract costs by having library and recreation staff take over administrative tasks regarding the cemetery and aligning partnership contracts with fiscal goals, all while continuing to provide core cemetery services such as maintenance of the facility.
She said specifically, the city is paying too much for contractors and that the city is losing around $100,000 a year for redundant services. She also said cremation has been trending as the more popular type of service compared to casket burials.
Sloane said transitioning the cemetery operations to a community-centered, cost-efficient amenity by bringing in more volunteers to help — similar to the library — and looking at partnerships to engage with the community, along with prioritizing services like cremation, will help ensure fiscal sustainability in the future.
“Because the expense side is so high right now, it’s really hard to recommend for you guys to continue growing those obligations without an efficient way of delivering the services,” Sloane said in regard to staff’s recommendation to pause new casket sales.
Maintenance of the facility will still need to be contracted out, Sloane said, but other recommendations for the cemetery included looking at planting more native landscaping in order to save money on irrigation.
Through all of this work, the goal is also to improve the overall aesthetic of the cemetery, which for many on the council and residents in attendance, was a major point of concern.
Each of the council members had many things to say during last week’s discussion, including Julie Testa asking if there are interested congregations who might want to buy the cemetery from the city — Sloane said there has not been any interest — and Craig Eicher wanting to maintain the current service model because of how much the city spends on its other parks.
Both voted against staff’s recommendations, but Testa voted no because she said she wanted to pause the discussion so that staff could continue evaluating other options because she could not fully support any of the ideas brought forth during the meeting.
While she disagreed with Eicher’s push to maintain the current model, she also thought the community needs to step up in order to continue having assets such as the cemetery.
“We can’t keep operating it at the loss that it currently is when we’re eliminating other valuable community assets,” Testa said. “I’d like to find a way to keep it but we have to work harder at doing that.”
However, Councilmember Matt Gaidos along with Vice Mayor Jeff Nibert both supported the motion to approve staff’s recommendations. Balch also voted to approve the resolution, adding that he would like to see staff work with veterans — some of whom spoke during the meeting — and cemetery staff as the facility works on making the changes outlined by city staff.
Without discounting the value oof Veretans service to the community and the country, Pioneer Cemetery is so-named because it began in the 1800’s and many historic names are interred there. Veterans associations have long cared about memorials to the fallen and the Veteran’s Memorial at the center of the cemetery is a remarkably beautiful centerpiece to this place of memories.
Once again, imaginative thinking is lacking in addressing the fiscal situation. There is an active genealogical society in this community that wasn’t even mentioned. A number of years ago they literally walked all cemeberies in the valley andpublished an inventory of gravesites, incuding a map of each site. They sell those publications and even with onine resources, people buy the publications when researching their famiies. An online site, Find A Grave, has a huge following, and as a long-time member I and several others offer to photograph graves for famiies who iive too far away to visit those graves themselves. In this area, we get requests for Livrmore cemeteries as well.
There are 3 mortuary/crematory business operating just here in the tri-valley, and others that could be selling burial services here if not for the current contract that allows only Graham Hitch. No wonder there are few burials now. I once tried to get information about a burial and was met with a lethargic response, leading me to understand the people in charge viewed my request as a pain in the neck and they didn’t really care about the cemetery. I tried to volunteer to help continue the work that the late Sandie Thorne did, and again was met with the attitude that nobody cared.
If we are a Community of Character, then our vallue of Compassion should be applicable when talking of cemeteries. They are long established places for both civilians and veterans to be remembered and their stories honored. Many cities across California attract visitors because of their historic cemeteries. They’ve learned how to capitalize on this resource. Placerville is one that comes to mind. There is even a PBS show featuring cemeteries with unusual grave markers. If we don’t preserve this city gem, we’ve lost a big part of who we are and how we got to be the citiy we claim to value.
Stop being so narrowminded and short sighted and look to your community to help perserve its rich heritage. Show some pride of place.