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Cemetery to Buy Plots from Odd Fellows
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By Jorge Casuso January 24, 2025 -- Nearly 150 years after they were sold, the City is poised to buy back 35 unused burial plots from the Odd Fellows Seaside Lodge, which no longer has an active Santa Monica chapter. The City Council on Tuesday is expected to authorize an agreement to purchase the plots at the City owned Woodlawn Cemetery for $5,000 each, or a total of $175,000 covered by the Cemetery Fund. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), which purchased 267 burial plots for their members in 1877, has 88 plots that remain unused, according to staff's report to the City Council. When a previous deal fell through in June 2022, the Odd Fellows were using one plot every three years for interment, according to the staff report at the time. The parties had "initially reached an informal agreement" with Seaside Lodge No. 369 for the purchase of 25 plots at $3,500 per plot, for a total cost of $87, 500, or half the current negotiated price. The purchase the Council is expected to authorize on Tuesday will help address "the City’s depleting inventory of burial plots at the Cemetery," according to Public Works staff. The municipal code gives the City sole legal authority to buy back plots from a private entity and bans any person from reselling any plot, crypt, or niche to a third party. Plot sales make up 45 percent of the operating budget of Woodlawn, which has been providing cemetery services for 131 years. As part of the purchase transaction, the Odd Fellows "will execute a quitclaim in favor of the City that will transfer any real property interest they may have in the Cemetery to the City." The order, which is believed to have started in England by working-class men who fell outside the system of trade guilds, was established "to provide a framework that promotes personal and social development," according to the site. "The command of the IOOF is to 'Visit the sick, Relieve the distressed, bury the dead and educate the orphan.'" The fraternal organization was established in the United States in 1819 in Baltimore, Maryland and currently has more than 3000 lodges, Making it "one of the world’s oldest and largest fraternal orders," according to the website. In 1851, it became "the first fraternity in the United States to include women when it adopted the 'Beautiful Rebekah Degree'" of lodges associated with the order. |
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