Notes from the Cemetery Commission. March 14, Hybrid meeting

Present:

• Candace Currie, Acting Chair
• Pat Flinn
• Patrick White, Chair, Select Board
• Rich Atwood, Cemetery Consultant
• Hugh Page, Superintendent Highway Department

1. Minutes for the January 31, 2023 meeting approved as written
2. The Commission thanked the Community Preservation Commission for recommending $42,000 for restoration of the Sergeant tombstones to Town Meeting
3. Page is prepared to make and install the cemetery-hours sign and is waiting for final design. Currie will send it.
4. White asked if there should be a uniform Town font for signs?
5. Arrange for periodic cleaning of stones. Can volunteers do it or only trained folks?
6. Flinn reported there are two ways to extend the planting of Thyme — dig up plugs from the cemetery to transplant or buy plugs. White recommended buying plugs — less labor intensive and fewer bare spots
7. A bylaw revision will be on the Warrant at Town Meeting
   1. Discussion of suggested changes
   2. One suggestion was open burials to all taxpayers — discussion — would that include absentee investors in businesses or owners of businesses who are not residents?
   3. Another question: What if not living in town at time of death, is a time living is Stockbridge required; is there a limit to time away prior to death?
   4. Some consideration of the collision between opening cemetery to more burials at same time that space is limited. It was suggested that Stockbridge buy additional land for a Ton cemetery even if the new cemetery land was outside Stockbridge town limits.
   5. Currie volunteered to speak to chair and perhaps Town Counsel and write up suggested changes for further discussion.

Meeting adjourned

Editor's note: Changing a bylaw is complex. In addition to Cemetery Commission, it involves Select Board, Town Meeting, and the Attorney General of the Commonwealth. At any of these steps, recommendations can be amended, or dropped altogether, therefore, the Commonwealth recommends a discussion of what is wrong with old one and minimum change in the wording to correct the problem identified.

Photo: Lionel Delevingne