Brandon Twp.- The township is offering an end-of-the-year sale of sorts, but it’s not likely a gift on your Christmas list.
Shoppers can buy a plot in the Seymour Lake Cemetery for the bargain price of $250 through Dec. 31. Beginning Jan. 1, the price will rise to $400 for residents, and $600 for non-residents.
The township board unanimously approved the price increase at their Dec. 1 meeting.
‘We are doing this to create revenue for perpetual care at our cemeteries, for maintenance,? said Clerk Candee Allen. ‘As long as we own that cemetery, we have to maintain it, it’s our obligation.?
The township actually owns and is responsible for maintenance of six cemeteries? Bald Eagle Burial Grounds, Carmer Cemetery, Eaton Cemetery, Hummer Rock, Seymour Lake Cemetery, and Shurter Cemetery. Of those, Seymour Lake Cemetery is the only ‘active? cemetery, in which burial plots are still available. The township purchased Seymour Lake Cemetery April 7, 1875, with some graves already existing. The cemetery has roughly 3,100 plots, with 875 burials and another 1,216 lots already sold, leaving about 1,075 available for purchase.
From 2008 to 2013, the annual cost to maintain all six cemeteries has averaged $11,200, said Allen. The township contracts businesses to perform spring clean-up and do fertilizing and mowing all summer, a labor intensive job due to the headstones/grave markers. Additionally, snowplowing must be done in winter, and the township is responsible for replacement or repair of broken headstones. The township has perpetual care rules to follow, made fence repairs in the past year, and also has parking lot improvements planned for the cemetery. Because the township only sells about four to six lots in Seymour Lake Cemetery per year, the cemetery does not generate enough revenue on its own for maintenance and money must be taken from the general fund to finance it.
‘Raising the cost will help pay for more of the care and will help us take less from the general fund,? said Allen.
Even with the price increase, Roy Langolf, director of Coats Village Funeral Home, Ortonville, said the township’s cost for a cemetery lot is far below that of other communities and a rise in prices was definitely in order.
‘When you understand how a cemetery operates? 15 percent of the money has to be placed in escrow to operate a cemetery into perpetuity? how do you mow the grass forever on $250?? he asked. ‘They need to increase the fees so they can continue to maintain the cemetery? not just for my lifetime or yours, but into the future.?
Langolf notes, and Allen confirms, that when a lot is purchased in the Seymour Lake Cemetery, two people can actually be buried on it? one in a casket and another with cremains, for just the one-time lot purchase price.
This is happening more often, Langolf adds, with cremation growing in popularity over the past 40 years.
‘Cremation is rising exponentially,? he said. ‘Part of it is economics, part of it is our environmental mentality. People think we are wasting space by burying people, even though we could bury every man, woman, and child in Oakland County right now without opening another cemetery. There is a lot of cemetery property and in light of the vast amounts of people burying two per grave, it makes it last longer… Most cemeteries aren’t full. If they are, you’re probably going back to the City of Detroit and old, old cemeteries.?
Cremation and the changing culture of rituals surrounding death, Langolf adds, can also be attributed to a more transit society.
‘Most of us don’t end up living where we grew up,? he said. ‘Cremation allows portability, so if you’re far away, it’s a lot easier to move a body. You can retire from GM at 52 and move to Arizona and live 30 years. What is home, Michigan or Flagstaff? Most people today, your children will not be buried with you like you saw multiple generations ago. In the ?20s and ?30s, you didn’t buy two plots, you bought six or eight, thinking the whole family will be buried there.?