In Northern California, owners of Skylawn Memorial Park informed workers they would consider selling the San Mateo County cemetery with a magnificent ocean view.

In Littleton, Massachusetts, city officials and residents are at odds regarding how to balance the Westlawn Cemetery budget.

Scenarios like these are unfolding in communities across the country – cemeteries fighting for their lives against numerous financial threats.

In many cases, the grim financial outlook cemeteries face is attributed to one or more the following:

• More people – up to 70 percent in some western regions – are opting for cremation rather than burial, and many people who choose cremation do not buy a plot to bury a cremation urn. With fewer gravesites, per-site maintenance costs escalate.
• Pre-need sales are in decline as consumers reserve cash for current needs.
• Costs of labor, maintenance, water, etc. continue to rise as revenue sources shrivel.
• Endowment funds have dwindled due to collapsing stock prices, leaving cemeteries in a quandary as to how they will cover future maintenance costs.
• Local governments, facing their own financial crises, lack the resources to cover cemetery budget shortfalls. Government-owned cemeteries that can’t be made self-sufficient are vulnerable to sale or service outsourcing.

Cemetery funding: common problem, no clear solution
Cemetery boards, owners and local governments are working hard to come up with creative solutions to preserve and maintain cemeteries. Some talk about adding cremation services to keep up with market demand and provide consumers with “one-stop shopping,” While others encourage green burials, which result in lower costs for both the consumer and the cemetery.

An attempt by the Cemetery Commission overseeing Westlawn Cemetery to allow construction of a cell phone tower on cemetery property – a move that would have added $1600 per month to the cemetery’s coffers – died under backlash from residents. And when the Littleton Town Administrator suggested working “in common within our other public works departments” to help lower costs, one Commissioner retorted: “We’re not open to the highway department taking over the cemetery. You have to have people who know how to run the cemetery. Digging a grave is not plowing a street or digging a sewer hole. It is an art. It’s not just the action of the physical hole. It’s a process.”

Short of a bailout, finding a solution could take awhile.