Prince George city council will consider a report Monday on the increase of Saturday interments at Memorial Park Cemetery.
The cemetery currently operates from Monday to Friday and charges an additional fee for Saturday interments.
From 2020 to 2023, there were 171 interments on Monday, 200 on Tuesday, 184 on Thursday, 173 on Friday and 142 on Saturday and just one on Sunday.
During the most recent fees and charges review, the finance and audit committee asked for information regarding the practice of Saturday interments and the background of the additional interment fees charged for services provided outside of regular business hours.
The report prepared by Sean LeBrun, parks and solid waste services manager, said the cost of the additional fee is designed, like all other fees and charges, to recover the cost of providing the service.
The cost of a Saturday interment fee in Prince George is $764, which is lower than Chilliwack’s rate of $838 but higher than Maple Ridge's $731.
Staffing levels at Memorial Park Cemetery are currently limited to a caretaker, a cemetery administrator and 2.5 FTE operational employees who maintain the entire park in addition to providing interment services.
They are unionized employees working five consecutive days from Monday to Friday and receiving overtime pay for any hours they are asked to work outside their regular schedule.
The report offers four scenarios to address the Saturday fee going forward:
- Expand the cemetery’s hours of operation to 6 days per week using the existing staffing levels. Many of the interments require multiple staff onsite to facilitate excavating/interring safely and would put additional pressure and scheduling challenges upon the existing employees.
- Hire a new employee for a Tuesday – Saturday shift that would provide coverage at Memorial Park for the sixth day. This would require a staffing enhancement to allow for the hiring of an additional full-time employee to eliminate the need to pay overtime to staff on Saturdays for interments that only require one employee. There would still be overtime rates paid to any additional staff required to assist the Saturday shift.
- Amend the fees and charges bylaw to remove the additional Saturday fees. Continue to pay overtime to employees working outside their normal work schedule without recovering any of the additional expenses from the customer.
- Continue with the existing industry standard process for charging a fee for services provided outside regular business hours.
