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City staff outlines costs, timeline if Mount Holly sells new Pineview Cemetery plots
Summary
City staff told the council that preparing Pineview Cemetery for new plot sales would require upfront surveying, roads and equipment and could raise annual operating costs from about $11,300 to roughly $110,000; staff modeled multiple price-and-sales scenarios and said record gaps make revenue estimates uncertain.
Brian Dupont, a city staff member presenting to the Mount Holly City Council, laid out staff’s evaluation on whether the city should prepare Pineview Cemetery for sale of additional burial plots. Dupont said the cemetery’s first lots were sold in the late 1930s and the last lot sold in 1985, and staff lack complete internal records for lots already sold.
Dupont said current routine maintenance costs are about $11,300 a year but that bringing the site online for new sales would require an upfront investment for surveying, design and additional access roads, plus staffing and equipment to operate the cemetery. He told the council that recurring operating costs in a full cemetery operation were modeled at approximately $110,000 per year.
Staff also presented revenue scenarios using a working capacity assumption of up to 5,000 additional plots. Under that assumption, Dupont described multiple price-and-sales scenarios the city modeled: for example, selling plots at $1,000 each with roughly 200 plots sold per year would exhaust those assumed 5,000 plots in about 25 years; a $2,000-per-plot price with lower annual sales extended the sell-out to several decades. Dupont said the City of Gastonia—used as a local benchmark—averages about 240 plot sales a year and charges about $1,200 per plot for residents and $1,500 for non-residents; using that sales rate in Mount Holly’s model would shorten the sell-out projection to roughly two decades.
Dupont emphasized uncertainty in the estimates: staff made explicit assumptions to generate scenarios and warned that incomplete ownership records and inflation of construction and maintenance costs mean revenue projections are rough. "We spend about $11,300 annually on maintenance," Dupont said, and added the recurring expense if the city operated a full cemetery would be far higher.
Council members asked about alternatives. Councilman Reeves noted the city could leave the property as-is and retain some acres for perpetual cemetery use; Dupont said part of the parcel will remain cemetery in perpetuity and that other portions have already been repurposed for city operations (for example a Public Works laydown yard). Dupont listed staff options the council could consider if it wished to proceed: create a perpetual-care trust fund, update city code and fees, and establish a cemetery board of trustees.
No formal council action was taken at the meeting; the presentation was provided for information and to request direction on whether staff should pursue further analysis or policy changes.
