Town Cemetery Committee
September 13, 2016

Present: Tim Giroux, Tom Richards, Russell Smith, Sue Haines, Rick Lees, David Jenney, Sandra Toohey and chair Jane Aiudi.

Met at 3:30 at the town office.

Mary Sabins met with us to tell us about our financial situation. The town allocates us $30,000 of which we have spent $21,173.34 on mowing and signs (which we had hoped would be on last year's budget but the signs weren't done it time). Last year we ended up with a surplus of $2,943.03 which reverts to surplus and hence we “lose it”. We have a cemetery perpetual care fund of which we spend the interest, currently $5,479.44. If a lot is sold, the money goes into this fund. The Cross Hill cemetery (which, with the North, are the two cemeteries in which we are currently selling lots ) still needs to be surveyed which might cost in the range of $4,000. Next spring we will try to use the :”extra money” for tree removal and/or stone repair – hopefully getting that done before the fiscal year ends at the end of June. Perpetual Care, by the way, is for ground work only, not stone work.

Tree work is extremely expensive. If we see trees that need to be removed, discuss it with Mary first as possibly Eugene can do it or have it done.

We looked at the rules. At the next meeting we will discuss whether they are ok as is, or suggest changes. They are currently written only for the North. Should we expand them to include all town cemeteries?

Tom and Jim will start working on signs again, trying again with the sign on the Nelson Rd which keeps being taken down. We had some discussion about the names of cemeteries there. The one on our map which is called Webber Family cemetery is really the Nelson Rd. cemetery.

Jane had been to a conference and learned about digitizing our cemetery records. There is a software program called Pontem which would cost $3600 for the license and then on the order of $500 annually. Apparently, one can get college interns to input the data, some of the mapping can be gotten from google earth! She thinks we do not pay the interns. We asked her to continue to pursue this. At some point these records would be available to the public online.

Our next meeting will be Oct 17 at 3:30 at the town office.