Remembrance Parks Central Victoria (RPCV) is seeking public input on the adornment of grave sites as the organisation moves towards a more community-focused approach, its CEO says.
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CEO Lauretta Stace, who was appointed to the role in August, told the Advertiser RPCV was planning "more of a community approach to looking after the cemetery" and she wanted its new policy on decoration to have "a more positive tone of voice".
"I think we have to be really open and flexible with the adornment policy now and make it more principle based, rather than rules based," she said.
Those principles might be safety, privacy and environmental sensitivity.
"We won't have a list of items that are banned necessarily because that's too black and white.
"I want the policy to have a positive tone of voice and be more about what you can do rather than what you can't."
A review of the cemetery trust's adornment policy was recommended by an independent investigation set up in the wake of a significant public outcry over RPCV's late 2022 and early 2023 policy of clearing grave sites, which saw irreplaceable personal items taken to the tip at Eaglehawk and Shepparton.
Hurt and anger over the affair prompted persistent calls for the organisation's board to resign and saw 15,000 people sign a petition asking for the adornment policy to be changed.
Following her employment Ms Stace had taken "a very personal approach" to the adornment issue, she said, meeting with affected plot holders one-on-one to listen to their stories and hear about their experience.
The process had given her a keen sense of the significance for some people of memorialising their loved ones in personal ways.
"It's really important that we don't cancel out their ability to individually adorn their site as to what's important to them," she said.
Another insight to have emerged for the CEO was the distinction between frequent and infrequent cemetery visitors.
While it was frequent visitors who were most impacted by RPCV's January stripping of graves, ironically, they were the ones who look after their sites best, she said.
"If something broke or smashed they'd remove it. They're very careful about it and wouldn't put staff at risk."
"What we have to focus on is infrequent visitors, who could, for example, put Christmas decorations up and leave them there all year."
While consultation is ongoing, Ms Stace flagged that the new policy was likely to prohibit alcohol but otherwise not specify "restricted items".
"We'll be saying to people, 'Just don't leave things on the lawn because the lawns are getting mowed'," she said.
"If items are deteriorated or broken, we will take them away."
In general, the attitude would be: "If it's not creating a hazard, if it's not harming anyone and has not been complained about, leave it there."
The policy looked likely to include clearly indicated clean-up days, when deteriorated items could be removed, Ms Stace said, and to provide for community and friends groups who were willing to help to be invited in to do so.
On the basis of public feedback, the trust was also planning to improve its communication by starting up a regular emailed newsletter.
A 26-question survey, asking for views around decoration what items should be allowed at cemeteries, is now open online and will close in the last week of November.
RPCV has so far received around 300 responses to its questionnaire, which was devised by market research company Stanford Marketing.
Draft documents based on the results are due to be released before Christmas.
