COMMENTARY

During the July 11, 2013 City Council budget workshop, Turner said, “There is no question that it (Crestlawn Cemetery) is a beautiful place that is held to the top. But once again, should we, the City, be in the cemetery business?”

MARK SCHUMANN

At Wednesday’s Taxpayers Association city council candidate forum, Pilar Turner was asked to clarify her position on Crestlawn Cemetery. Turner’s answer was hardly a full and accurate statement of her true position.

Now that she is running for re-election, Turner would have voters believe she never considered selling Crestlawn Cemetery. However, on May 13 she told her fellow Council members, “It’s our fiduciary responsibility to look at all options and consider it…It’s one of the options we need to look at.”

It was Turner who initiated plans to seek a buyer for the cemetery.  It was Turner community activists met with to try to persuade her not to put the cemetery up for sale. It was Turner, along with Craig Fletcher, who was outvoted at the August 13, 2013 meeting of the City Council, when Jay Kramer moved to bring a stop Turner’s effort to have the City staff seek a buyer for Crestlawn.

Initially supported by Tracy Carroll and Craig Fletcher, Turner was only stopped when Carroll, who was running for re-election in 2013, distanced herself from Turner and Fletcher on this issue, siding instead with Kramer and Richard Winger.

Turner now claims her only interest was to develop a plan to enable the municipal cemetery could become a self-sustaining enterprise. Turner’s election-year claim is disingenuous. You don’t turn a business around by putting it up for sale.

In her answer to the Taxpayers Association, Turner also greatly exaggerated the financial challenges at Crestlawn, just as she has continued to exaggerate the financial challenges of the City.  “It was running a $100,000-a-year deficit,” Turner said. Turner created the impression Crestlawn is, or was, regularly “raiding the trust fund that is supposed to support it.”  In truth, $100,000 was drawn from the fund in a single year to make capital improvements. Turner would have the public believe Crestlawn was regularly running a $100,000 deficit. That is simply not true.

During the March 14, 2013 budget workshop, City Manager Jim O’Connor, Finance Director Cindy Lawson and Public Works Director Monte Falls all made it clear to Turner Crestlawn is now operating at better than break even and will in the coming years be able to replenish trust funds that were used to make capital improvements.

In a July 19, 2013 story headlined, “Council to consider RFP for selling Crestlawn,” InsideVero quoted City Manager Jim O’Connor as saying the City is breaking even on the operation of Crestlawn, even though the City’s rates for cemetery spaces and columbarium niches were, at the time, below market price.  O’Connor also told InsideVero the Council members who were considering selling Crestlawn were interested in raising cash and reducing the size of city government. Clearly, the effort to seek a buyer for Crestlawn was not O’Connor’s idea.

It could be more than coincidence that at about the time Turner was pushing the City Council to issue and RFP in search of a buyer for Crestlawn, Victor Lowman, representing StoneMor Partners, a cemetery and funeral home corporation, was in regular contact with City staff.

Though Turner will not admit it now, the record shows she does not believe the City should own, maintain and operate Crestlawn Cemetery.

The City Council held a special call meeting on March 14, 2013 to discuss Fiscal Year 2013-14 budget goals and priorities. Then-Mayor Craig Fletcher asked his fellow council members, “Are there specific, value-added activities, customer services, customer amenities that the Council would prefer to see reduced or eliminated. Do you want to target anything specific, in other words.”

Then-Councilwoman Tracy Carroll said it was time to outsource fleet maintenance and the solid waste department (garbage collection).

Following Carroll, City Manager Jim O’Connor said, “We are trying to find a market for the cemetery. There is no reason for us to be in the cemetery. We have talked to some folks about that, and we are looking at an RFP to market the cemetery and to look at if we can unload that one.”

At about the same time, City staff was in regular contact with a representative of Stonemor Properties, and Pennsylvania-based company that owns and operates funeral homes and cemeteries across the country.

It is simply impossible to believe City Manager Jim O’Connor would have taking steps on his own to sell the municipal cemetery. It is more likely, I think, the suggestion came from one or more members of the Council.

During the Aug. 13, 2013 Council meeting, Carroll, who was sensing public opposition to the sale and who was running for re-election, joined Richard Winger in supporting Jay Kramer’s motion to direct staff to abandon the search for a buyer for the cemetery. Pilar Turner and Craig Fletcher opposed Kramer’s motion. Now that she is running for re-election, Turner claims she never encouraged or supported selling Crestlawn Cemetery.

During that same meeting, Councilman Richard Winger said, “I don’t think we should go through the painful exercise of playing around with selling something that, in my opinion, is a sacred trust. I just don’t think we should do it. I think we should take that off the table. It’s not costing us anything. We’re probably going to make money on it, and I just don’t see it.”

Turner replied, “It’s not costing anything? We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for this. We have no plan going forward. We have no reserve. It was a system that was supposed to be funded with a trust fund. There is no trust fund there anymore. I mean, the system’s broken. I hope we could come up with a plan. But until we have an alternate plan, it is our fiduciary responsibility to look at all options and consider it. You don’t have to go forward with it, but I think it is one of the options that we need to look at.”

Now Turner contends it was never her intention to “look at” selling the cemetery, only to put it on a solid finical footing.

Below is Turner’s full answer given at the Taxpayers Association forum, followed by the minutes of the Aug. 13, 2013 City Council meeting.

John Kistler: Many people here, myself included, have loved ones buried in Crestlawn Cemetery. It has been repeatedly reported that you either were in the past, or are currently in favor of selling that cemetery. Would you please clarify your position on this subject, and do you understand why those of use who feel this is a uniquely special place would be concerned with the possibility of it being sold?

Pilar Turner: There was never a vote to sell the cemetery, therefore I never voted to sell the cemetery. In 2013, we did a budget review, we were going through finances of the cemetery, and that’s when we had the discussion. As a fiscal conservative, the cemetery as an enterprise fund was in serious trouble. It had no reserves. It had raided the trust fund that is supposed to support it, and it was running $100,000-a-year deficit. That was my issue with the cemetery. I asked the city manager to come up with a strategic plan to help preserve it.