By Kevin Ueda
Special to the Daily Press

PICO NEIGHBORHOOD — Within its metamorphic rock walls, the vividly colored stained-glass windows illuminate corridors lined with Italian sculptures and ceiling frescoes. The Colorado- and Italian-marble building sits upon 27 acres of lush lawn and trees that outline the home to numerous movie stars and famous Westsiders of yesteryear.

The location in question isn’t a European museum in Hollywood, but Santa Monica’s Woodlawn Cemetery. The municipal cemetery, located between Pico Boulevard and Michigan Avenue, from 14th to 17th streets, has been a city enterprise rich in history, if not revenues. Last year alone, Woodlawn lost $507,569, according to city budget reports.

Woodlawn Cemetery has been incapable of sustaining itself for at least 10 years and will require further assistance from City Hall’s general fund, said cemetery manager Gil Borboa.

This past fiscal year, City Hall subsidized Woodlawn Cemetery with $560,000 from its general fund. City officials project that for this fiscal year, the cemetery will require about $131,000 from the general fund in order to break even, according to Borboa. And next year, City Hall is estimated to subsidize the cemetery with $328,000.

City Hall Finance Director Steve Stark said the amount of subsidy fluctuates because it depends upon the amount of money required to operate the cemetery each fiscal year, which begins on July 1 and ends on June 30.

“It goes up and down based on the need of the cemetery to provide a constant level of service,” Stark said.

Woodlawn is one of several city enterprises that don’t break even and require City Hall funding, Stark said, adding the Santa Monica Pier and the Civic Center also are losing economic endeavors.

“We provide services that enhance people’s quality of life and, oftentimes, those aren’t services that generate revenues — police and fire being the most obvious of those,” Stark said.

Although Woodlawn can’t offer much in the way of revenue, it does provide stability and comfort for the relatives of those buried there, said City Councilman Herb Katz, who has three family members buried at the cemetery.

“You know it won’t be sold out from under you like a private (cemetery) could be,” Katz said. “You’re also going to get a decent upkeep and know that it’s our cemetery. There’s more to it than just buying a plot.”

In the last fiscal year, the cemetery’s revenue amounted to $567,723. City officials have expected the poor revenue to continue this fiscal year, in which it is estimated to drop to $498,000, according to Stark.

EXPENDITURES, SALARIES TO INCREASE

Not only is revenue declining, but expenses are increasing at the cemetery. Another reason it has failed to break even is because of recent projects and the routine replacement of grounds equipment, Stark said, adding that operating expenses come from a separate fund just as capital projects are paid for separately.

The cemetery’s operating expenses in the last fiscal year totaled $1,075,292, according to the city budget. City officials budgeted a 2.5 percent increase in costs for this fiscal year, in the amount of $1,102,041. However, that amount is a projection and the actual costs may differ. Officials budgeted $1,158,136 for the next fiscal year’s costs, demonstrating an anticipated 5.1 percent increase, according to the budget.

“There could be one year that we subsidized it more,” Stark said. “There’s people and equipment out there necessary to run the cemetery.”

Recently, the cemetery received expansions of the mausoleum and relocated its administrative offices, Stark said, adding those were capital expenses.

Improvement expenditures skyrocketed in the last fiscal year, but have dropped for this year and will continue to do so into the future, according to city budget reports.

The improvement costs in the last fiscal year amounted to $605,346. This year, those expenditures will drop to $232,743 — with $128,350 of it going toward vehicle replacement, according to city staff reports.

Borboa said the anticipated raise in employees’ salaries and expenditures are part of a regular increase in cost of living and supplies.

There are nine permanent positions and the equivalent of half of a position in overtime and temporary employees at Woodlawn, according to city budget reports. In the last fiscal year, the employees received a total of $707,789 in salaries, wages and benefits, a 1.6 percent decrease from the previous year, according to a city staff report.

For this fiscal year, the cemetery staff will see a .59 percent pay raise, which brings the total to $712,034 — although the staff size will remain the same, according to the city budget. The salaries for the 2007-08 fiscal year is tentatively set in the amount of $751,349, a 5.2 percent increase, according to the budget.

WHEN THE ‘NO VACANCY’ SIGN LIGHTS UP

Although the cemetery will completely cease drawing funds when it reaches capacity, city officials say that they have its financial future laid out.

Once Woodlawn is filled up and cannot accommodate any more interments, it will sustain itself with a perpetual care plan, which acts like an endowment, Borboa said.

The plan’s funds were established since its acquisition by the city more than a century ago, Borboa said. Fifteen percent of each sale of a grave, niche and crypt goes into the perpetual fund.

“In the ideal world, the interest earnings of that fund will pay for the cemetery into perpetuity ... like a trust fund,” Stark said.

Once the cemetery reaches its capacity, the staff would likely be reduced to just maintenance crews, further reducing its costs, Stark said.

City officials hired L.F. Sloane Consulting Group in 1996 to determine the cemetery’s monetary standing, in regard to endowment funds and its quality of service. The study showed that the cemetery’s funds and service was up to par, Borboa said.

In 2000, city staff conducted another financial study which showed that its funds were still in good standing, Borboa said.

City officials hope to conduct another study by the end of this fiscal year to update its economic forecast, which should ideally occur once every five to seven years, Stark said.

One reason the cemetery’s fiscal situation might not be exact is that Michael Steen, the former funeral director, was fired last year after three audits revealed the management of Woodlawn’s finances was not in line with general accounting practices. In addition, city officials believe Steen was acting unethically by promoting and benefiting from his domestic partner’s monument-making business at the cemetery.

The audits have shown there to be some discrepancies in Woodlawn’s financial books. After an eight-month investigation concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing on Steen’s part regarding the financial discrepancies, they determined it was more incompetence than anything else.

City Hall has hired a new cemetery administrator, Virgil County, who will begin working on Aug. 16.

Borboa said there are currently no plans to expand Woodlawn, although Councilman Katz would like to pursue the possibility of adding more mausoleum space.

“I’ve heard that way back for years,” Katz said of the plans not to expand Woodlawn. “Whether or not that’s true, when we get to that point, we have to address it then.

“I think it’s feasible. We should,” he said.

WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED

Within the ground’s tranquil beauty lies a mystery for city officials — an exact count of how many people are interred there.

“It’s accurate to say that we don’t have a precise, accurate count,” Borboa said. “It’s just a matter of the paper records that we have going back 100 years.”

There may be about 200 niches left in the mausoleum and it’s unclear how many niches there are in total, said Sylvia Romo, interim billing specialist at Woodlawn.

That’s why the City Council approved a contract with Ramaker & Associates, Inc. for $153,425, so the firm can digitize all of the cemetery’s records.

“The exercise to digitize all of our paper records will give us an exact figure (of graves),” Borboa said. “It makes sense that as we’re getting closer to capacity ... to get a handle on the number of graves that we have for sale.”

Borboa said the cemetery is about 90 percent capacity. About 10 years ago officials did a body count and determined there had been 51,000 interments, 40,000 of which were burials in the ground — cremations and caskets. At that time, there were 11,000 entombments, according to Craig Perkins, director of City Hall’s environmental and public works department. City officials’ best guess is that there are 2,673 unsold spaces.

Borboa added that digitizing the records will facilitate quicker access in the future and prevent loss in the event of a catastrophe.

Brandon Finley, director of geographic information systems with Ramaker and Associates, said the company will begin working this week and is slated to finish in five months. The company is in the process of getting all the necessary clearances and administrative access to begin working, he said.

Ramaker and Associates has prepared a staff of up to 10 employees to sift through about 60,000 records and match each to a grave on a digital map, Finley said.

“We’re scanning all these olds maps and old pieces of paper that are degrading over time and slow to access,” Finley said. “It’s kind of like fitting all the pieces of a puzzle.”

If a grave location on record doesn’t match up to the actual grave, Ramaker and Associates will turn the discrepancy over to cemetery administrators who will investigate the inconsistencies, Finley said.

“We put it in the cemetery’s hands to figure out what’s correct and what’s really in the ground,” Finley said.

Cemetery employees may probe a suspected grave site to determine whether a coffin vault lies beneath the soil, Borboa said.

The tool of choice for the probing process would be an elongated metal rod — at least six feet long — which would be thrust into the ground. If the probe stops at about six feet deep, or the surveyors hear a dampened “thud,” they may assume that a coffin vault lies beneath their location. The probe would likely have hit the dead end of a coffin vault, made of cement — although not all of Woodlawn’s burials are encased in cement, Borboa said.

CEMETERY HAS A VELVET ROPE

Those who wish to spend eternity at Woodlawn must first check their addresses and family trees.

To be buried at Woodlawn, a decedent must either be a resident of Santa Monica, have lived in the city for at least five years, have a blood relative buried there, or have served in the military, Borboa said.

“That’s what keeps it being this community and cultural resource that is very important to a lot of people,” Borboa said.

The requirements, which do not apply to the mausoleum, could have been set up as space at the cemetery became increasingly scarce, Borboa said.

Graveyard burials cost about $4,907, which includes opening, closing, care funds, the cement vault and flower container, said Kathy Conner, staff assistant at Woodlawn. A double-depth grave, where one coffin is stacked upon another, costs about $7,630, she said.

The rates do not include the cost of headstones, which, as of recently, must lie flat onto the ground to better facilitate grounds maintenance, Conner said.

“The maintenance is too hard to keep up,” Conner said. “(Maintenance crews) have to go around (upright headstones) with weed-whackers.”

Mausoleum rates vary depending upon the height at which a crypt is placed into a vault, Conner said. Generally, the more expensive spots are those at eye level, and the least expensive are those placed toward the ceiling, she said.

Crypt rates range from $2,500 to $5,000 and do not include opening and closing costs, she said. As with burials, Conner added, double crypts cost more than single crypts, ranging from $5,000 to $9,000. For what’s left at Woodlawn, business has been slow. Annually, there are about 250 new interments, which include niches, crypts and graveyard burials — some that already have been purchased, Perkins said. The total number of new grave sites and mausoleum sites sold annually range between 110 and 120.

“The spaces that we have left are not necessarily the most desirable, as one might assume,” Borboa said. “The most desirable spaces are the ones that are taken first. The ones left might be along the borders of the cemetery ... not as attractive as some people want.”

WOODLAWN’S HISTORY PREDATES CITY

Another mystery regarding Woodlawn is its precise history.

“It appears that the cemetery ... was in a state of disrepair and neglect, and was deeded to the city of Santa Monica by the family which owned the cemetery, possibly the Carillo family,” Borboa said.

The Santa Monica Historical Society holds an Oct. 5, 1975 Los Angeles Times article that reported the city managing Woodlawn since at least 1898. At the time, the plot of land belonged to the Carillo family, who donated the land to the city in the place of unpaid taxes, the Times reported.

A Santa Monica Historical Society document from 1998 reported that the Carillo family officially turned title over to the city in 1907. The document is an unpublished report on the history of Woodlawn Cemetery, researched and written by James E. Pfrommer, a former 10-year member of the Santa Monica Historical SocietyWoodlawn’s first burial took place some time in the 1700s, though it is unknown who he or she was, Pfrommer wrote.

The burial occurred before the site was known as Woodlawn and after the arrival of the Missionary Junipero Serra and his soldiers, Pfrommer wrote.

Woodlawn is home to an Olympic athlete, notable locals, and numerous actors and actresses from early- to mid-20th century films, Pfrommer wrote.

The document reports that Woodlawn’s residents include Santa Monica real estate developer Abbot Kinney, who sought to make Venice, Calif., a replica of Venice, Italy; Olympic athlete Rose Bush; actress Audrey Lindley, known as “Mrs. Roeper” on the television show “Three’s Company;” actress Irene Ryan, also known as “Granny” from television’s “The Beverly Hillbillies” and descendants of the Carillo and Machado families, both of whom were involved with the cemetery in past centuries.

Today, the Elks, Masonics and Odd Fellows own about 10 percent of the cemetery grounds, Borboa said.

The Elks celebrate Memorial Day at Woodlawn Cemetery as a city-supported tradition for more than 25 years, Borboa said.

The aesthetic appeal of Woodlawn attract student photographers and prospective filmmakers, who ask for permission to shoot on weekends, Romo said.

“The mausoleum has some pretty spectacular stained-glass work,” Borboa said.

City officials allow photography, although filming is considered a commercial activity and is not permitted, Borboa said.

Santa Monica College spokesman Bruce Smith said he is not aware of any photographic events that teachers and professors hold at Woodlawn. However, he did say that an SMC English professor found the site of Woodlawn, located across the street from her office window, more haunting than anything.

“She had her desk facing away from the cemetery because it gave her the creeps,” Smith said.