Sonoma’s three burial places are becoming more and more crowded.
Ryan lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
In the end we all are “product” and/or the stuff that fills “product,” and if the “product” is dwindling it‘s bad news because plunging “product” means fewer bucks.
So it is for the city of Sonoma, the operator of the city’s three money-losing cemeteries—final resting places for what cemetery professionals call products (us) in products (holes in the ground or other variations of interment) as well as uplifting accoutrements and embellishment products – an aesthetically appealing “scattering garden,” for ashes of the departed, for example.
The city’s three burial places are the Mountain Cemetery, the Valley Cemetery and the Veterans Cemetery, and the problem is this:
As Sonoma’s population becomes grayer and grayer, the cemeteries have all but run out of space, maintenance cost are mounting, financial demands are eating into the city’s general fund. Currently it cost over $300,00 a year. All and all, say city officials, a bad situation demanding attention and solutions sooner rather than later.
So at its meeting on Sept. 19, the council directed staff—following a bleak presentation from some burial consultants, who refer to most things cemetery as “product” – to find out if there is anyone out there who would like to buy three cemeteries – of if not three maybe one or even just one if that is the best deal that can be found.
Or maybe, offered Mayor Stanley Cohen, though he considered it a long shot, just maybe there is private cemetery firm that would like to enter into a “joint venture” with the city in running the cemeteries.
In any case, council member August Sebastiani believes it is time to get out of the burial business.
“I think it is the right thing to get the cemeteries off our back,” he said.
Said City Manager Michael Fuson, “The bleeding just keeps going on if we do not have inventory to sell.” (“Inventory” is frequently used interchangeably with “product.”)
The experts hired by the city, RJM Design Group of San Juan Capistrano, were not at all sanguine about the appeal of the city’s cemeteries to the private sector.
John Courtney of RJM ran off a litany of past, present and future problems connected to the cemeteries including the city in the past charging too little for plots.
Subsequently, he added, prices “increased in 2005 in sales of sites due to new inventory and the natural death rate.”
But that was an upward blip in an otherwise bleak portrayal of the future.
Recently, he said, the Veterans Administration opened a cemetery in Dixon and promoted it by offering free burials. It had a negative impact that stretched to Sacramento, which experienced a 20 percent drop in business.
As for private businesses stepping in to take over Sonoma cemeteries, Courtney said, “It’s not a very good investment because they have to make a profit year to year—but the city doesn’t.”
All and all, he said, “It is a high risk for a modest return and businesses do not like that scenario.”
Or as it was put by Sebastiani, “It does not take a Harvard graduate to understand that the cemetery business is not necessarily best to get into.”
However, Sebastiani said that he had made a few calls to some private cemetery businesses in Santa Rosa and there had been a lot of interest.
“There was a resounding ‘yes’ from two of the three I called,” he said, referring to a hypothetical question from him about purchasing a cemetery from a city.
A potential selling point would be if the city would add city-owned land above the cemetery as part of any deal offered to a private concern.
Council member Joanne Sanders suggested that maybe “the timing is right to get out while we have some land.”
However, council member Ken Brown said this is a non-starter. Several years ago a hotel developer sought the land above the cemetery. The issue was put before voters and was soundly defeated.
But another cemetery consultant, Bob Hunt, said all is not despair. The Mountain Cemetery, he said, “is a beautiful product—the most beautiful we have ever seen.”
In the end, the council directed the staff to look into all possible options of dealing with the cemetery problem, including the first choice of most if not all of the members: selling the three.
Brown, however, thinks this is extremely unlikely. In an interview Monday he said the more than likely outcome is that the city will remain in the cemetery business. The challenge, he said, is to find an income source to make it less of a drain on the taxes paid by Sonoma’s almost 10,000 potential cemetery products.
