The Ramona Cemetery District is asking San Diego County Supervisor Joel Anderson to fill a seat on its three- member board, which has been vacant since last December, before talks of a possible merger with the Ramona Municipal Water District.
But Anderson has said that before he fills the position he would like to hear from an ad hoc committee that was formed by the Water District to do a study on whether the Cemetery District should become part of the Water District.
Following the formation of the committee, Erica Wolski, general manager of the Water District, said there were options other than a full merger.
“Considering this doesn’t mean we would have to fully consolidate the Cemetery District; it might be that we help them with services, such as financial or human resources, depending on what they want and want to pay for,” Wolski said.
Anderson said in an interview last week that he pushed for the ad hoc committee, which was approved at the water board’s Feb. 17 meeting with members Jim Hickle and Jake Zoria.
“I think this is an opportunity to shrink government, to make it more efficient, effective and accountable,” Anderson said about the possible merger. “When you look at having groundskeeping, secretary, an executive director, the Water Board could look at economies of scale or might be able to oversee the whole thing.
“On the same token, if the Water Board doesn’t want the responsibility, I understand that, too,” he said.
The Cemetery District is a special district that oversees Nuevo Memory Gardens in Ramona. Board members Pete Smith and Joe Stupar were appointed by the supervisors in January last year and Casey Lynch was appointed in December 2024.
One of the seats became vacant in December when Lynch took a seat on the board of the Water District, which is also a special district and requires members to serve on one board only.
In the last few months, Smith and Stupar, the remaining cemetery board members, have had some areas of disagreement, and without a tie-breaking third vote, those issues have been left unresolved.
But Smith and Stupar said they have had successes in updating the cemetery since becoming board members.
“We agree on the majority of issues and we make good decisions on a lot of areas,” Stupar said. “Along with District Manager Patty Estrada, we’ve made huge strides in getting the cemetery up to speed, such as selling old, unused equipment to pay for much-needed new equipment, organizing an office and paperwork in which nothing was computerized for decades and finding new spaces for burials, among other things.”
Estrada was hired last September after the sudden resignation of former manager John Vargas.
Smith said he and Stupar disagree on a few things, which get the attention.
“Because the Brown Act prevents us from discussing board-related business with each other in between the monthly meetings, we have to have discussions and exchange ideas at the meetings,” Smith said.
“We want to keep going with the good momentum we’ve started. No matter what happens with any potential merger, we need help now. Having a third person on the board is crucial, from adding another point of view and insight to their experiences to pushing the cemetery goals forward.”
Stupar said he feels the same.
“We’re asking — we’re begging — the county to help us. The good progress we’re making is being overshadowed by lack of a third trustee,” he said. “Whether a decision is made by the water board in a month or six months or even later, we want to be able to keep moving forward.”
Wolski said it would be better if Ramona residents had the ability to directly elect, and recall, if needed, local officials.
“Because we have not done the evaluation, I do not have an opinion on whether a merger is beneficial for either district,” Wolski said. “But I would encourage us as a community to look at options for achieving representation on the Cemetery Board that are directly accountable to the local taxpayers funding it.”
Lynch said he would like to see Anderson appoint the third board member.
“No matter what is happening at the district level, it may take some time. But right now, if there is a disagreement then nothing passes and it is creating stagnant representation,” he said at the March 10 cemetery board meeting.
Juliana Stewart, Mel Cary, Debra Foster, Vince Ciampoli and Helene Armand have applied for the vacant board seat
With more than 30 years in the death care industry — 24 as sole owner of Bonham Bros. & Stewart Mortuary in Ramona — Stewart said she believes she brings a lot to the table. Her family is buried at Nuevo Gardens.
As a Ramona resident of 24 years, she said residents are concerned about the lack of a third trustee and interested in what happens on the board.
She said an appointment to fill the vacant seat “needs to be taken care of right away.”
Although she said the end goals of both the water and the cemetery districts are very different, “as long as the merger is not going to have a major fiscal impact on the community, I can be convinced.”
Cary said as a longtime resident — his wife has lived in Ramona for nearly 70 years and he’s lived there since 1985 — having a local cemetery is important and is something he’s personally interested in.
With family and friends buried at Nuevo, he said he has taken care of issues on the grounds, such as designing, building and installing the sign as a volunteer and spent weeks walking the cemetery grounds recording the location of every plot and lot.
Although Cary said he didn’t know enough about a possible Water District merger to have an opinion on it, he agreed that a third board member should be appointed.
“Anytime you have more people discussing an issue, at least you can come up with more options,” he said. “But the people at the county should discuss who gets picked with the people currently involved with the cemetery.”
A 25-year resident of Ramona, Foster said her frequent visits to the cemetery, where both her parents are buried, motivated her to apply for the trustee position.
“When a board has only two trustees, it creates a built-in risk of deadlock,” Foster said. “If those two people disagree, there is no internal mechanism to resolve the issue, which can stall decisions on things like maintenance, finances or policy,” she said.
She said she would also want to know more about a possible merger before commenting.
Estrada said the five people applied for the trustee seat immediately after Lynch stepped down.
“Three months later, the position has remained unfilled,” Estrada said. “If a merger is truly beneficial for the community, why could it not proceed while a full three-member board continues to serve the Cemetery District?”
There are presently no cemetery districts in San Diego County that are part of another special district, and cemetery districts in California generally operate as independent single-function districts, according to San Diego LAFCO and the California Special Districts Association.
Anderson asked for patience from the residents as the ad hoc committee does its research.
“If they are close to making a decision, it may not be worth it to appoint a third person,” he said. “If a merger is a good fit for the district we will consider it; if it’s not, we won’t.”
Cemetery District board meetings are held the second Tuesday of every month at the Ramona Heritage Museum (formerly the Guy B. Woodward Museum), 645 Main Street, or visit: https://www.ramonacemeterydistrict.com/meetings.