Hoping to clear the cobwebs around an ongoing issue plaguing Central Coast cemeteries, the Santa Barbara County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) wants to explore the possibility of consolidating some of those cemetery districts.
In its 2025 review of countywide municipal services, LAFCO staff highlighted a handful of cemetery districts, including Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard and Los Alamos Cemetery, facing budget constraints due to limited tax allocations and land availability.
“We identified some of the challenges that some of these cemeteries have, often related to the amount of revenue they receive and the ability to retain staff,” LAFCO Executive Officer Mike Prater said at the commission’s Dec. 11 meeting.
Prater recommended a future study to see if consolidating some services between Los Alamos Cemetery and Santa Maria Cemetery, and Oak Hill Cemetery and Goleta Cemetery, respectively, could benefit all four districts through certain incentives and responsibility shifts.
However, pushing revisions of this kind forward would take coordination between Santa Barbara County and the impacted cemeteries to an extent beyond LAFCO’s jurisdiction, Prater added.
“To be able to resolve those down the road, that’s where it takes the effort largely probably of a district supervisor getting in contact with the cemetery districts and their boards and having those conversations,” Prater said.
LAFCO Commissioner and 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson expressed interest in stepping up to the plate.
“These are important resources in our communities,” Nelson said. “I actually cut my teeth in government by serving on the Santa Maria cemetery board. … That one’s near and dear to my heart.”
Nelson asked Prater about the best way to get the ball rolling on exploring consolidation options.
“[Do] I need to do something as a county supervisor—in my other hat—to start to have some of those conversations, … about potential consolidation?” Nelson said. “We probably shouldn’t wait until there’s some kind of calamity.”
It would be up to an impacted agency—either Santa Barbara County or one of the cemetery districts—to explore taking that route, Prater explained.
“An affected agency could be the county. So on behalf of them, you could suggest changes,” Prater said. “Ultimately, any boundary changes that come forward have to come forward from either the district itself or an affected agency.”
Prater added that LAFCO would still “play a role” during those potential coordinated efforts.
“We’ll sit as a partner alongside county representatives and/or cemetery representatives to help facilitate what those discussions might look like,” he said. “But, ultimately, either of those two entities have to sort of be the proponent and applicant for any real change.”
This article appears in Dec 18 – Dec 25, 2025.