Dry, dusty cemetery not a peaceful resting place, angry Arroyo Grande residents say

Last year, the Arroyo Grande Cemetery District was given a ceremonial plaque for its decision to stop watering the grass at the cemetery in light of the drought.

This year, a group of residents have condemned cemetery management, saying the drought-decimated land is an “eyesore” to grieving families.

“Don’t try to come out here in a pair of sandals or high heels, because you’re gonna go home with dirt,” Arroyo Grande resident Miranda Osteen said. “From the 101, this place looks horrible. It’s a huge eyesore.”

Osteen is part of a grass-roots movement to improve the cemetery. She and her group have attended district board meetings since the summer, pushing for cemetery improvements, while still balancing the continuing drought’s impact on the landscape and the district’s restricted budget.

“There’s a veteran right over here, and his headstone has been filled with dirt for months,” she said, waving to a far-off grave. “It’s an eyesore just standing here and looking at it.”

The grass was slightly greener at the 20-acre cemetery on Thursday because of light rainfall several weeks before, but that couldn’t hide the piles of dirt covering some of the headstones, or the large gopher holes pockmarking the weed-strewn property. In the distance, a cloud of dust was visible as one of the cemetery’s three workers swept a headstone in the newer section of the cemetery.

Victimized by drought

It didn’t always look like this.

Before the drought hit California, the cemetery was the lush green so typical across the country. But that green cost a different sort of green to maintain.

In 2013, the district was spending as much as $15,000 a month to water the lawns, according to district trustee Terry Fibich. That year, it used 29 acre-feet, or 9.45 million gallons, of water.

The next year, as it faced rising water costs and what looked to be an ever-worsening drought, the district cut its water use in half. Finally, the district decided to stop watering altogether in June 2015.

At the time, the decision to turn off the water was lauded by residents and city officials concerned with the potential impacts of the drought on the city’s water supply. The district was even awarded a ceremonial plaque for being one of the city’s top water conservers.

Now that the impacts of that decision — dust and gopher holes — are being seen, some residents are pushing the district to do more than just turn off the water.

“This is the only cemetery in the area that looks like this — parks look better than this,” Osteen said. “Employees are neglecting this place.”

Osteen, whose mother is buried in the cemetery, said she would like to see more drought-friendly landscaping, using a combination of decomposed granite, bricks and/or river rocks to replace the dead grass and improve the look of the area. She’s also proposed using recycled water to water the grass.

“I would love to be buried with my mom here, but I’m not going to be buried someplace that looks like this,” she said. “I want to be buried somewhere nice, and I think everybody here was expecting that.”

Osteen said her suggestions have been met with little but resistance from the district so far.

“We come to the board meetings, we voice our opinions and we get shot down every time,” she said. “They tell us no, because we don’t have money.”

Fibich said the district is in a difficult situation, wanting to make some improvements but not having the budget to do so.

“This is one of those situations where we are caught between a rock and a hard place,” Fibich said. “We want to create a place where loved ones can rest in peace and the family can get some comfort ... but there are things we can do and things we can’t do. And of course the biggest factor is our financial situation.”

Fibich said the district operates on an annual budget of about $400,000. A little more than half of that goes to the salaries for the district’s three workers, as well as other expenses.

The money comes from a combination of property taxes — about $112,000 per year, plus revenue from cemetery services such as selling plots and conducting burials.

Fibich noted that 2015 was the first year in which the district operated in the black, though that was in part because of an employee retiring and not being replaced.

If the cemetery were to turn the water back on, it would cost about $70,000 a year, he said.

Improvements planned

Fibich said the district is looking into making some limited improvements at the cemetery, such as pockets of drought-tolerant landscaping, though he said he thought renovating the entire grounds would be expensive and not conducive to the way burials are conducted. Recycled water to keep the grass alive is also out for the moment, he said, because the district doesn’t have the infrastructure to transport recycled water from the wastewater treatment plant.

He also said the district is attempting to solve the cemetery’s gopher problem, though they have faced significant delays there as well. The district is looking into a trapping program that would catch the gophers, though that will take time, Fibich said.

“It just doesn’t happen overnight,” he said.

Because of the limited funding and staffing, Fibich said he thinks the majority of the desired work at the cemetery and any fundraising to pay for it will have to be undertaken by a volunteer group.

Fourth District Supervisor Lynn Compton, whose district includes the cemetery, said the county is limited in what it can do to help the cemetery because it is a special district that operates independently from the county. She noted she was working with the cemetery to research grant opportunities, as well as assisting in forming a volunteer group to maintain parts of the cemetery.

She also noted that the only other option to significantly increase the district’s funding would be to vote to raise assessments within the district. That would require a two-thirds approval by voters.

“Basically two-thirds of the voters would need to feel that the situation is so visually unappealing at this point that they would be willing to have their assessment raised substantially in order to increase the funding to the cemetery to make it more ‘visually pleasing,’ ” Compton wrote in an email to The Tribune. “I do not believe such a tax increase would be well-received by the voters at this time.”

Otherwise, Fibich said people will have to adjust to the fact that the district can’t afford to turn the water back on, and that the dead grass is likely here to stay.

“I think we have to accept that the cemetery is going to look the way it is at certain parts of the year,” he said.

Osteen said she doesn’t think that is good enough.

“They really need to do a change,” she said. “It’s not good for the people. It’s not good for the town — it looks horrible for the town. It’s time for a change.”

This story was originally published October 29, 2016 at 8:49 PM with the headline "Dry, dusty cemetery not a peaceful resting place, angry Arroyo Grande residents say."