A leading cemetery industry consultant was effusive Tuesday in his praise of Metro's cemeteries program, saying its new policies were some of the most forward-thinking in the nation.
"Is it above industry standards? Yes," said Paul Elvig, the past president of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association who was hired by Metro to analyze the program's new policies. "You folks have got an outstanding organization."
Elvig was briefing the Metro Council about his findings at its Tuesday work session, less than two days after he appeared on "60 Minutes" as a spokesman for the industry.
He's spent the last three months looking at the cemeteries program, which is recovering from a series of embarrassing incidents, including empty, abandoned graves being re-sold without the original owner's permission and human bones being removed from the cemeteries and dumped at Blue Lake Regional Park. Metro paid Elvig $15,809 for the review.
Rachel Fox, the cemeteries program manager, and Paul Slyman, director of Metro's Parks and Environmental Services Department, have been working on new policies to prevent those incidents from happening again.
Elvig offered particular praise for the regional government's soil removal protocols, in which topsoil from newly-dug graves is taken off-site, and excavated soil from deeper in the grave is placed on top of new interments.
"You're guaranteeing the integrity of what's in the grave," Elvig said. "If it's at the bottom and you've dug it out unintentionally, you're going to put it right back in at the top."
He didn't come to the council simply to heap praise on Metro staff. Elvig suggested that Metro set aside more space for a cemetery office at the Metro Regional Center and said the regional government should consider hiring its own staffers to open and close graves.
Metro contracts with Suhor Industries for opening and closing services and requires that contracted employees adhere to a code of conduct.
But Elvig said it's important that those workers actually represent the agency in their work.
That's a conversation for a future budget year, Fox said. Hiring a crew would involve more than just adding positions – Metro would have to purchase excavation equipment, for example, and that's a capital expense that would have to be run through the council.