Basin folk are none too pleased about the price of a plot in the town cemetery increasing from nothing to $100 – with talk of an even bigger potential increase next year. “It’s like robbing the dead,” resident Bonnie Jellison said of the change.
Thanks to limited costs and sizable donations from locals burying loved ones, securing a plot at Rainville Memorial Cemetery had been free of charge for decades. That ended in May, when the two-member board approved a $100 fee. Then this week, the board informed The Monitor that a further $150 increase could come within the next year.
“Living here in Basin, we always knew where we were going to be,” added Jellison, who has lived in Basin off and on for half a century. “Now you’re saying that a grandchild can’t be buried with their grandfather because they can’t pay $250?”
