Cemetery Committee Meeting Minutes November 13, 2023

Time and Place: 3:30pm, Vassalboro Town Office

Present: David Jenney, Jane Aiudi, Scott Wentworth, Savannah Clark, Aaron Miller

David, Jody, and Scott fixed the stone in the North that had been knocked over by the tree. They also went and checked out Bragg Cemetery and noticed a tree down. Savannah emailed Aaron to see if public works could take care of it. Stonework is done for this season.

A few minor changes were suggested to the updated cemetery rules. Savannah will make those changes and then distribute the updated rules for everyone to look at. If there are no further changes, she will send it to Aaron to give to the Selectboard for approval.

We have $13,000 in the budget for tree cutting. We agreed to finish cutting all trees in Maple Grove and then if there is money to move on to Methodist. Savannah will get in touch with Aaron to have Public Works find a company to do this work.

Scott has a group of volunteers who are willing to work four or five days a week during the summer in the cemeteries. They will clean and fix stones. He will come up with an estimate of the cost of supplies they will need so we can put this into our budget for next year. We will also likely look into getting a Margaret Chase Smith intern for mapping next year. This will cost around $7,000. David also suggested potentially hiring Joe again. We will finalize the budget at the next meeting.

The Town Office will be closing at 3:30 on Mondays starting January 1, 2024. The committee decided to move our meeting time to another day of the week at 3:30. The meetings will likely be on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, we will finalize this at the next meeting.

Aaron will let us know how best we can help the Town Office expand their cemetery knowledge. David suggested an FAQ sheet and Savannah offered to help train staff to use Pontem. Anyone with questions on cemetery matters should be referred to Savannah.

Our next meeting will be on December 4, 2023 at 3:30pm at the Town Office.