By David F. Rooney
It’s going to cost more to be buried or have your ashes interred at Mountain View Cemetery.
City Council meeting as a Committee of the Whole tentatively approved a new set of fees for interment of full bodies and cremated remains that more than doubles the existing fee structure.
That might sound like the ultimate cash grab, but it really is an improvement on the current fee situation.
According to Darren Komonoski, operations manager for the Engineering and Public Works Department, the real operating costs at the cemetery were much higher than the current fee structure allowed. As a result, families were being dinged for extra charges after burying their loved ones.
“It wasn’t very sensitive,” Komonoski said.
The situation irked Brandon Bowers Funeral Director Gary Sulz to the point that he recommended the City institute a realistic set of fees for full-body burials, the interment of cremated remains and the placement of urns in the cemetery’s two columbaria. Each columbarium is made of granite and contains rows of niches where families can store the urns containing their family member’s ashes.
The new fees, which you can read in full in the two images below, are also intended to promote the use of each columbarium’s top and lower two rows of niches which people tend not to want as final resting places.
Komonoski also said there are about 500 burial plots left at Mountain View. That’s good for about the next 15 years, he said.
