In recent days there’s been some media reporting about fees at the Carr Villa Memorial Park.
We’d like to provide some context to that reporting so that Launceston residents have a clear understanding of the rationale and history behind the fee structure for this important community asset.
The Carr Villa Memorial Park is a significant regional facility, set on 50ha of land at Kings Meadows. It is separated into different zones, including a lawn cemetery, a monument cemetery, and memorial walls; there is no other comparable facility in the Northern region.
In the 2013-14 financial year, the City of Launceston identified that fees at the Carr Villa Memorial Park were artificially low, and that Launceston ratepayers were at risk of having to provide significant subsidies to the facility in future years.
The Council voted to introduce staged fee increases over a number of years aimed at bringing the facility in line with comparable cemeteries in Tasmania and across Australia, ensuring it remained financially sustainable, and easing the burden on ratepayers.
The fee increases that have been introduced since then are not ad hoc annual increases — rather they are part of a strategic set of phased increases which are expected to continue until the 2021/22 financial year.
Importantly, despite these staged fee increases, the fee structure remains substantially lower than other similarly sized Tasmanian facilities.
The management of Carr Villa Memorial Park is a responsibility the City of Launceston takes extremely seriously.
Carr Villa Memorial Park is not operated as a profit-making venture by the City of Launceston, but rather as a community facility providing a valuable range of services to Northern Tasmanian families.
The fees charged are reflective of the costs involved in creating and managing plots in perpetuity, and are structured on a break-even basis.
A fair pricing model for the costs associated with running a facility like Carr Villa Memorial Park allows us to undertake other works to care for and improve it into the future.
For example, this year the City of Launceston has budgeted $205,000 for capital works at Carr Villa Memorial Park, following $345,000 worth of upgrades last year.
On average, Carr Villa Memorial Park oversees 300 cremations a year, and around 200 burials.
The death of a loved one is an extremely traumatic event, and people rightly expect the very best in cemetery facilities like Carr Villa Memorial Park.
We’re proud of the facility we offer Northern Tasmania, proud of the caring and professional team we employ, and proud of the meaningful and positive relationships we’ve built with families across Tasmania in their time of need.
