Lansing’s parks director says the city’s cemeteries will likely operate at a loss for the foreseeable future as more people turn to cremation.
Parks and Recreation Director Brett Kaschinske said the move toward cremation is part of a national trend driven in part by families not being able to afford the higher cost of full burials.
But that also means less revenue for the city, even as costs for labor and maintenance continue to rise.
“Each year, we look at our cemetery fees and our cemetery rates and have increases for those, but again, you’re looking at a situation where those just are not a for-profit thing,” Kaschinske said.
He said operational costs not covered by cemetery fees are absorbed by the department’s other offerings, like campgrounds and trails.
“Anytime that we’re not bringing in revenue through fees, we have to cover that through our general fund or through our millage, and so that’s always going to be a challenge to be able to provide that service for our residents,” Kaschinske said.
Kaschinske said the trend is also driven by society becoming increasingly spread out, leading to a decline in families purchasing a single large plot of land to serve as a final resting place that all of their descendants come back to.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.