Clinton's a cheap place to spend eternity, but not for much longer

With jumps in water rates and residential property taxes, it's getting more costly to live in Clinton. And now, it's getting expensive to die here, too.

On Wednesday, June 6, Department of Public Works Superintendent Chris McGown informed the Board of Selectmen that Clinton’s interment and lot rates are coming in well below the average costs being charged by surrounding communities — and it’s time to raise them.

“People do a double take when they see how low our prices are,” McGown told the board. “Our interment prices are half or less of what other town’s are charging.”

McGown explained that the average price for a standard lot in most communities is about $500, whereas Clinton is only charging $400 for a single lot.

“We are low but we aren’t that low,” McGown said on Thursday. “It’s our interments that are really low and we need to get them up to date.

According to the Department of Public Works Web site, www.clintondpw.com, a full burial during the week costs $200 while the opening of a lot on the weekend costs $350, both of which are well below the average for a number of surrounding communities including Acton, Princeton, West Boylston, Marlborough and Leominster.

According to a survey of 34 towns in Massachusetts, McGown discovered that the average cost to open a lot during the week is about $460, and the average price to have a burial on the weekend is about $565. Clinton has also been offering bargain basement prices on cremations during the week, $75 in Clinton compared to the $137 average of surrounding towns. A weekend cremation in Clinton costs a bereaved family $140, while surrounding towns charge on average about $250.

“Buddy McRell [cemetery foreman for the town] and Bob Pasquale, because he is in the flower business he knows a lot about the cemetery business too, had been talking about our rates and how low they were, and we’ve known that they’ve been low for years and years,” McGown said when asked what prompted the town to look into increasing interment rates. “I think the last time that we did raise them was about 10 years ago.”

In fact, McGown said, Clinton’s rates are so low that even with the fees being collected it actually costs the town money to have a funeral on the weekend.

“If we bury somebody on a Saturday it really costs the town money because our interment rates are so low it doesn’t cover the overtime costs of the guys coming in to do the burials,” McGown said. “It is budgeted for, but it’s not right and there is no reason for us to have our fees that much lower than everybody else.”

During the meeting with selectmen, McGown also explained that almost all the money generated by the Cemetery Department goes back into the town’s general fund. The Cemetery Department does have an endowment fund to cover various costs for things like maintenance that only collects money from the sale of lots. Currently, McGown said, the endowment fund has about $100,000 to cover cemetery expenses.

“It won’t be me that ends up doing it, but 20 or 30 years from now we are going to end up expanding Reservoir Pines Cemetery,” McGown told the board. “We have to make sure that we have enough money in that endowment fund to cover the cost of expanding the cemetery.”

Selectmen asked McGown to come up with a recommendation of what he thinks would be an adequate increase in rates.

“I was on the board when we first started talking about Reservoir Pines and I know our rates were way below the average then,” Selectman Mary Rose Dickhaut said. “So maybe it’s time we raised them a little bit.”

(Patrick Brodrick can be reached at 978-365-8044 or at pbrodric@cnc.com)