I'm on a cemetery board of trustees.   My dad did it before me.  If you want to be left alone just go work in the cemetery.  Folks will make an effort not to see you.  April 1 (more or less) we (me, sometimes with a little help) remove all the flowers and broken decorations.  The only flowers we leave are obviously recent ones in good condition.

Mowing is causing us financial problems.  Our long time mowing contractor retired.  His family  (Parent, mom after his dad passed, now him) had mowed it for probably 30 years.  We only had one bid to mow it and it was twice what we had been paying.  Cost us $500 per mow for an approximately 5 acre cemetery.

We used to get pretty regular donations.  However many of the best donors are now residents.  One of our problems is a declining area population.  It's in the Wabash River 100 year flood plain.  Draw a circle with a 2 mile radius around the cemetery. There are 50 - 60 fewer houses compared to 70 years ago. I don't think even if you wanted to you could get approval to build a house.

Illinois has some fairly strict laws about cemeteries that until recently were pretty much ignored.  But after some Chicago area incidents the state got more involved.  I think it was last year we had a state cemetery inspector give us a visit.  He was very happy with ours.  But I think a lot had to do with his previous visit that failed in sooo many areas.

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