For 145 years, Mount Tamalpais Cemetery in San Rafael has been a significant part of Marin’s landscape.

The cemetery holds the gravesites of many of Marin’s pioneer families and notables, from shipping and timber magnate Robert Dollar and the Boyd family members to baseball Hall-of-Famer Lefty Gomez and local personality Sally Stanford.

Today, it’s the subject of growing concerns about so-called “abandoned” cemeteries. Some owners have too few new plots to sell. Some find the burial endowments paid to maintain cemetery grounds are not enough. They are walking away.

Mount Tamalpais is not abandoned, but it has been facing complaints, state fines and penalties for failing to use its endowment to keep up the grounds.

It is one of the cemeteries cited in legislation aimed at coming up with a strategy. Endowments paid by families for gravesites for their loved ones should be enough to ensure that cemetery grounds are maintained.

The state Cemetery and Funeral Bureau has followed up on complaints about Mount Tamalpais and has fined the business and revoked its cemetery license. Because it still has its funeral license it can still conduct burials, but it is forbidden from selling new plots.

That’s why it has been cited in a state Senate bill that proposed that county Local Agency Formation Commissions be assigned the task of finding new owners, possibly counties or cities, to take over the cemeteries, their endowment accounts and responsibility for maintaining the grounds.

The legislation also called for a 150% increase in various cemetery bureau fees to help pay for long-term maintenance of abandoned cemeteries.

Other proposals raised during the state’s deliberations over this issue in recent years include having the counties or cities that originally permitted the creation of these cemeteries take on the task.

Neither Marin LAFCO, an organization that mostly oversees local jurisdictional boundaries and the provision of local services, nor the County of Marin want the job.

Both opposed the legislation, which has since been substantially downsized to only call for the formation of a “working group” to discuss whether endowment funds are adequate to cover long-term maintenance costs. The group is supposed to report back to the Legislature by next June. Keeping the public informed about the work group’s deliberations and the bureau’s enforcement should be priorities.

The county has faulted the cemetery bureau for being slow to enforce its requirements for timely operational and financial filings and maintenance of the grounds.

“In the Mount Tamalpais case, enforcement came too late to prevent significant losses in the endowment care fund,” Marin Supervisor Mary Sackett wrote.

“Meanwhile, grieving families, faith communities, and cemetery neighbors continue to face uncertainty and distress,” she wrote in a letter to the legislation’s author, state Sen. Laura Richardson, D-Long Beach.

Families of loved ones buried at the cemetery have paid into an endowment account that is supposed to take care of maintaining the grounds. They trust that that work is going to be done. That trust deserves to be secure.

Dr. Henry DuBois Jr. created the cemetery out of his ranch situated between San Rafael and San Anselmo. He toured many cemeteries before coming up with his own plans, which included a number of artificial lakes, reportedly 2,000 trees, numerous flower gardens and a well, for the site.

Today, the cemetery may not be as elegant as DuBois envisioned when he opened it in 1879, but it is a reflection of Marin history and for many local families, their roots.

The state needs to come up with a plan that upholds the promises of those endowments and prevents cemeteries from falling into forgotten and disrespectful shambles of overgrown weeds and disrepair.

Richardson is particularly concerned about the fate of a cemetery in the Southern California community of Carson, which has been abandoned and locked. Copper gravemarkers have been stolen. She says the new 2026 deadline for the work group’s report underscores that “action needs to happen.”

The work group’s success will depend on its focus on practical solutions and effective action.