Challis city officials are taking another step away from having city employees dig burial plots in the cemetery.
At last week’s City Council meeting, Mayor Corey Rice said he wasn’t sure what was the best way to tell cemetery board members that the city isn’t willing to do that work. Rice said he doesn’t want the practice to continue. He thinks the cemetery district should instead work with private contractors.
“The cemetery is really comfortable with us doing it,” Rice said. “They know we do a really good job. They don’t know about someone else.” Rice acknowledged that city workers take pride in the work. “It’s someone’s final resting place,” he said.
In March, council members voted to increase the fee the city charges funeral homes for digging plots. The city charges $400 for a standard burial and $195 for an urn burial. Those fees cover up to two hours of work by city employees. If it takes longer than two hours, a $40 an hour per employee labor cost is added to the fee along with an $85 per hour per item equipment fee.
Funeral home directors can hire anyone to prepare the plots, but the practice in Challis for many years has been to hire the city to do that work. Funeral homes work with cemetery district board members for burials.
In February and March when the council discussed raising the rates and no longer having city employees dig plots, Rice told council members he’d spoken to local excavation contractors about them doing the work and they told him they are willing to. He said the same thing last week. In March Rice said he would share that information with the cemetery board members, but it hasn’t occurred.
City Clerk Savannah Pedersen told council members “we are the only city that does it.”
Council members also again discussed the status of the price the city charges the cemetery district for water. For more than a year discussions have been ongoing at council meetings about the amount of water used at the cemetery and the price paid for that water. City officials want the cemetery to develop an irrigation system that uses surface water instead of using treated water from the city’s system.
Last month, Rice said he’d ask cemetery district officials to attend the November council meeting to further discuss the issue. The matter was on last week’s agenda, but no one from the cemetery district was at the meeting.
Earlier this year, the city increased the water charge to the cemetery district to $5,000, which was paid this summer. But, the district used another $6,500 of water this summer, Pedersen said.
Rice said council members need to decide if they want to alter the amount the city charges the cemetery district for water before next summer. Cemetery officials never signed the water use and cost agreement that city officials approved this summer, although they paid the $5,000 it called for.
Rice said he’s been told that cemetery district officials are working on plans to implement a surface water system and have applied for grants to do the work.
Council members took no official action on the cemetery water matter last week and didn’t identify the next step.
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