Alton's fight over cemeteries enough to wake the dead

A petition-driven warrant article will give voters next week the opportunity to dissolve the Board of Cemetery Trustees and put the selectmen in charge of the cemetery trust fund and the operation of the town's cemeteries.

The organizer of the petition says the change would offer voters greater transparency and direct control over the operations of the graveyards, while the trustee chairman says it wouldn't necessarily be so.

Virgil MacDonald, a member of the town's Budget Committee, said he put the petition together because he thinks the selectmen could do a better job than the trustees.

"They claim the taxpayers have no say with them," he said. The trustees have purchased land to expand the cemeteries, he elaborated, they've bought an excavator to help develop the land and he said they hired a relative of the trustee chair to do the work.

It's an example, in MacDonald's mind, of non-transparent operation and poor management of resources. He feels those problems would be fixed if the selectmen took over the cemeteries.

"It would give the taxpayers a say in it and if they had complaints they can go to the selectmen and get answers," he said.

However, Shirley Lane, cemetery trustee chair, said the problems MacDonald refers to exist only in his imagination and his statements regarding recent cemetery happenings have been clouded with inaccuracy. "He's got the whole 10 years so mixed up," she said.

Lane, in a letter to the editor, says the project MacDonald referred to was indeed put out to bid and that the trustees awarded the contract to the lowest bidder, Lakewood Equipment, Inc., operated by Brad Jones of Alton.

Lane's son owns a heavy equipment company and was sub-contracted by Jones to help with the job. "Whatever the arrangement was between the two of them, I stay out of it," she said. "Virgil's got it in his head that my son made a fortune down there, he's just wrong."

Lane thinks the trustees have done a good job managing the cemetery fund and its operations. The fund has a principal of about $329,000 that must be left to accrue interest, and an expendable fund currently valued at $289,000. The cemetery trustees are elected, she noted, so voters can choose new leadership without dissolving the board. They also must follow a budgeting process like the rest of the town's departments.

Where the cemetery trustees are different is that they don't use taxpayer dollars, instead they rely on revenues from the fund's interest as well as sales of lots and various fees.

With interest rates very low, though, and the cost of doing business higher than ever, trustees foresaw that the cost of operating the cemeteries would begin to deplete the fund quicker than revenues could replenish it, leading to a situation where the cemetery budget would require augmentation from tax dollars.

To help stretch the fund's existence, Lane presented the Budget Committee this year with a proposal for the town to cover the costs of the cemetery department's insurance. Lane noted that other departments enjoy such an arrangement.

The Budget Committee had a different idea, though. They proposed sharing the sole cemetery employee with other town departments, as the worker's unique skill set would enable him to help plow snow for the highway department or work for parks and recreation.

Upon hearing this development, cemetery trustees countered by immediately signing the employee to a five-year contract that forbids him to work for another department. MacDonald said, "It shows they're not even trying to help," he said.

Lane admits the contract with the employee was "tongue-in-cheek" and has since learned that it is null and void. She said it was written to send a message that the employee is valued and trusted and is busy through the year, maintaining and rebuilding the cemetery's equipment though the winter. "As long as we have work for him, to me, our work is just as important as parks and rec," she said. Referring to the Budget Committee, she said "they don't even want to listen to your suggestion. It's their way or the highway, and that's where we are, the highway."

As to MacDonald's suggestion that the selectmen would better run the cemeteries, Lane questioned how that could be. As chairman, she's on call seven days per week to serve families who need to quickly arrange a lot purchase. "Are the selectmen going to do that?"

And as to the claim that voters would have greater control over their cemeteries under the supervision of the selectmen, Lane countered that selectmen have authority to spend some monies, such as surplus funds, without voter pre-approval. "The selectmen have the right to spend that money. They had a Christmas party last year for all town employees, I didn't see that in a warrant article."

For those who have further questions about the cemetery department, Lane will be doing an informational presentation of the department's operations at the town library on March 31 at 7 p.m. The event was initially scheduled for March 3, but was rescheduled by the library for fear that the rancorous politics surrounding the issue would turn the presentation ugly.