Board of Selectmen Minutes - September 11, 2007 (Special)

Pamela Bochinski said the initial proposal included three sites; through discussions they have increased it to five sites. They had originally approved up to $10,000 and now the total cost is $10,500 so they are coming back to approve the additional $500 to complete this.

Pam said it is the decision of the committee to go on a double prong attack. One is to evaluate sites where we would be starting from scratch and the other one would be to investigate how much room is in the Coley (formerly Norfield) cemetery on Weston Road and what it might cost to find that out. The reason they feel if those two alternatives were in front of the selectmen then they would have a choice. She said this was not a lot of money to evaluate five different sites of varying types versus what is probably going to be considerable more money to find out whether there is room in the Coley cemetery.

Mr. Miller suggested that they attack the Coley cemetery first. He felt they should get a survey of the property. Pam said that they do have a land survey of the property that Bruce Root did a number of years ago. When Don Ward looks at it with his aerial flyover he is looking for signs that there was activity at some point in certain place that you cannot tell by looking. He puts all of that information into a computer and comes up with an analysis.

Pam said the way they find room in an existing cemetery is to reconfigure the infrastructure. There is limited infrastructure in the Coley cemetery. Mr. Miller asked how much infrastructure would you have if you bought vacant land. Pam said you get to design the infrastructure and get what you want. Mr. Miller said he looks at it differently, if we own a piece of land which is currently a cemetery and we are able to use that land to develop at least half acre or more that is much less expensive in his judgment than it would be to go out and buy an acre or two of land.

Mr. Major said that may or may not be true. One of the issues with the Coley cemetery is that some of the unused area is actually over grown and steep so you would have to go in and do terracing in order to make it useable. There are costs that may be greater at the Coley cemetery than they may be at some of the other sites given the topography of some of the other sites.

Mr. Major said that we are investigating at least two (Library and Jarvis) sites which are currently town owned properties which in theory could at sometime in the future be considered for other uses as well. If they are not valid cemetery sites going forward it would help our thought process in determining whether at some subsequent point and time we might want to use them for something different. He said even if the Coley cemetery had space his expectation would be that the minute that the plots are established, people are going to go out and buy them. Mr. Miller said that there should be a provision that they be sold back to the Town if they are not used.

Mr. Bliss said after talking to Mr. Ward he agrees that you should build a cemetery for at least 50 years. He said that the Coley cemetery would not be able to contain that so we will have to have some alternative sites. He said as Mr. Major had said two of those sites have potential for other future town use. It would be good that based on analysis not their opinion whether or not they would be good for cemetery sites.

Mr. Major made a motion to appropriate an additional $500 to the Cemetery Committee in order for the Town to enter into an independent contractor agreement with Grever & Ward, Inc., the $500 be added to the $10,000 that was previously designated for the Town to enter into the agreement with Grever & Ward. Mr. Miller seconded and the motion passed unanimously. The motion will be forwarded to the Board of Finance for action at their next meeting.