Countywide : State’s First Public Cemetery Sale OKd

In what would likely be the first sale of a public cemetery to a private company in California history, the Orange County Cemetery District has accepted a bid of $31,000 for the 120-year-old Magnolia Memorial Park Cemetery.

The district’s board of trustees, hoping to shed the site’s annual $30,000 upkeep cost, this week agreed to sell the six-acre Garden Grove cemetery to the Omega Society of Santa Ana.

Magnolia Memorial Park Cemetery, founded in 1874, is the smallest of four cemeteries controlled by the district, which has an operating budget of $1.5 million.

The sale must also be approved by the Board of Supervisors, which will review the issue in the coming weeks.

District General Manager Sam Randall said selling the parcel will help his agency weather state revenue losses that are projected to total $700,000 this year.

“Our budget losses are really forcing us to downsize and streamline,” Randall said. “Last year, the revenue shift cost us another $200,000, so these are sizable cuts, obviously.”

Staffing cutbacks among the district’s 20 employees and a shift toward contract work for landscaping maintenance are other tactics being used to soften the budget blows, Randall said.

No plans are underway, but Randall said the district has not ruled out selling one of the remaining three public cemeteries in the future.

But while another sale would further lighten the fiscal burden, Randall said there is a reluctance by the district to surrender its historic properties.

“It’s like selling part of the family or a family heirloom,” Randall said.

“The board expressed a certain sadness with the sale of Magnolia because some of our history and pride go with it.”

Magnolia Memorial Park Cemetery, at 12241 Magnolia St., was known as Westminster Cemetery until 1969, when its name was changed to avoid confusion with the larger, private Westminster Memorial Park.

Among its 3,800 graves are the burial plots of early Orange County pioneers such as the Lampson family.

All of the board of trustee members from the county’s original cemetery district, founded in 1926, are also interred there.

Randall, who is also president of the California Assn. of Public Cemeteries, said his research shows this to be the first sale of a public burial ground to a private company.

While public cemeteries are allowed by state law to use only underground graves, privately owned sites are permitted to build mausoleums, making more profitable use of space.

There is room for about 1,000 ground grave sites at Magnolia Memorial Park Cemetery, Randall said.