News Photo by James Andersen The entrance to Evergreen Cemetery is pictured on Sunday. A recent move by the City of Alpena could bring in needed revenue for projects at the cemetery.

ALPENA– A recent move by the City of Alpena could bring in revenue needed for several projects at Evergreen Cemetery.

The city has been limited on how many improvements it can make at the cemetery because of a small return from the interest accumulated from its perpetual care fund.

To help increase its return, the city pulled much of its money from the fund and proceeds from a municipal bond it cashed out, and reinvested the money in an investment fund through the Community Foundation Northeast Michigan.

City Manager Rachel Smolinski and Clerk Anna Soik said the move should generate a higher rate of return from the interest which will help the city make improvements to roads and other infrastructure at the cemetery.

“We can’t withdraw the funds and can only use the interest earned on it and our investments in that fund haven’t been doing that great,” Soik said. “We just had a large sum of money sitting in a bank account not doing much for us. The returns the foundation is seeing have been great. A lot better than what we were getting.”

Twice a year, the city can pull the interest money from the foundation’s fund and pump those earmarked funds into the cemetery.

The city could also elect to keep investments where they are and try to collect a larger payout.

Smolinski said besides roads, the mausoleum and gateway arch could be repaired and, eventually, the steel fence in front of the property could be restored and reinstalled. She said the more revenue the city gets from its investments, the less money it needs to allocate to the cemetery from its general fund balance.

“We feel it will be good for us,” Smolinski said. “It should allow us to invest more into the infrastructure there and then not have to worry about the costs going up because we were forced to put off maintenance. This money will be set aside only for projects at the cemetery and this is going to be a great tool for us.”

Soik said the revenue from the Community Foundation’s investments can also cover the cost of labor and staff at the cemetery, such as cemetery sexton.

The fund with the foundation is also open to donations from the public or businesses that would like to see the cemetery improved. The foundation has several other municipalities utilizing its investment fund, including Rogers City.

Because the foundation handles administration duties of the investment fund, Soik said the foundation collects a 1% fee from the city because it invested more than $500,000. A smaller investment would have had a higher fee, Soik said.

Soik said analysis of the rate of return was done before making the switch and it showed the city should pull in larger amounts of money from higher investment returns, but, she also admits it is a bit risky because the prior fund guaranteed a 5% return on investment, whether the market went up or down.

Still, Soik said, all signs point to the city receiving more revenue than what it previously received. Soik said it was only a few thousand dollars each year before.