The Cemetery Committee Is Alive and Well

By Matt Riiska

This is a late invitation, but on August 1 at 5:30 p.m. at the Botelle School Hall of Flags Representative Maria Horn will be fielding questions in regard to school funding. The conversation will focus on State Education Cost Sharing (ECS), Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR) and state contributions to funding special education. Each of these items received a lot of interest during the recent budget discussion. All are welcome to attend and encouraged to participate.

About a year ago, the Cemetery Committee was re-established. Members of the committee are Phylis Bernard, JoAnn Gundlach, Stan Civco, Pete Mulville and me. The committee is responsible for the three cemeteries that the town operates:  South Norfolk, Grantville and Pond Town.  The other cemeteries in Norfolk, Center and Saint Mary’s, are operated as separate entities with their own governing boards. Other than prioritizing maintenance needs, we are working on mapping and creating a more comprehensive set of cemetery rules and regulations. For years we have been working with outdated and rather frail maps. This spring we engaged New England Subsurface Imaging (NESI) and Dufour Surveying to create updated maps. NESI started the project by using ground penetrating radar to locate and mark gravesites. Dufour Surveying followed up with collecting and documenting the data using a computer aided drawing (CAD) package called AutoCad. We now have the new maps and will be reviewing them and asking town historians and the public to help better identify some of the older graves. We will continue to update the cemetery maps using a lite version of the AutoCad software called AutoCad LT. If you have questions in regard to this or would like to help in documentation please feel free to contact me. 

Have a great summer!