BRUNSWICK

On Halloween 2014, someone tried to give Brunswick Town Manager John Eldridge a cemetery.

That sounds like a macabre joke. But the reality is, Riverside Cemetery Association President Scott Walker entered Eldridge’s office with plans to hand over control of the cemetery to the town of Brunswick. Walker had been serving on the association’s board of directors for 30 years, many of them as president.

In an interview on Wednesday, Walker said he has done enough for the cemetery and wants to leave those duties behind.

Things haven’t gone according to plan.

“I closed the books down at the end of the year and gave it to him,” Walker said, referring to Eldridge. “I didn’t hear anything from the town for two or three months. Then he said, ‘this might not be as simple as you think.’

“I said, if I just walk away from it, you can’t make a private citizen do a job.”

Walker, who said he also has a plot in the cemetery, is currently in Florida but still maintains a residence in Brunswick. He said he will be back in Brunswick in a couple of weeks.

Walker said he is unsure where he’ll go from here. He had thought he was finished with the association as of Dec. 31, 2014.

“Whether that’s going to be or not, I don’t know,” Walker said.

In February, Town Attorney Stephen Langsdorf wrote to Walker informing him that the town was under no obligation to take control of the cemetery.

On Wednesday, Langsdorf reaffirmed that statement.

There are legal obligations for a municipality to take over cemeteries that have been abandoned for more than 40 years, said Langsdorf, and to help ensure that veterans’ headstones are kept in good condition. The state had mandated that municipalities maintain burial grounds dating prior to 1880, but that law was changed in 2013 making it optional, according to Langsdorf.

The Riverside Cemetery Association formed in 1916. The earliest stone in the cemetery dates to 1828, according to a history of the cemetery compiled by Donald and Mark Cheetham.

“Certainly, the town could make the decision to take it over and vote to take the deed and assets, but there is no obligation to do that,” said Langsdorf.

Eldridge on Wednesday said that taking on the cemetery would be an added responsibility, and an added cost, to the town.

“It’s an unfortunate situation, and I can appreciate that he doesn’t want to do it anymore,” Eldridge said. “We don’t have an obligation to assume responsibility for it.”

Eldridge noted that, while he had spoken with Walker since the October encounter but before Walker left for Florida, the cemetery documents including maps, records and account statements are still at town hall.

Walker said that several years ago he also approached then-Town Manager Don Gerrish, seeking to transfer ownership of Riverside.

“I said, ‘I got to get rid of it somehow, I just can’t keep doing this.’ He said, ‘if you give it the town, you give it to the town. There’s not much we can do about it if we have to take it,’” Walker said.

When asked if he recalled telling Walker that the town would have to take over the cemetery, Gerrish on Tuesday responded: “I don’t believe I ever said that. That was a long time ago.”

Walker said he approached Brunswick’s Congregational and Presbyterian churches. Neither were interested in running the cemetery, he said, and he was disinclined to ask more churches.

“I didn’t want to go to church to church to church,” Walker said.

How the association would go about transferring ownership of Riverside is another matter. A quorum of six board members would be needed in order to make that type of decision, Walker said, and he doesn’t have that.

“There are no active board members,” said Walker. “My vice president died a year and a half ago. It came down to a one-man show.”

The association has not had an annual meeting for two years, Walker said, and finding replacement board members has been difficult.

Walker said he attempted to recruit new members, and for a while had family members sitting on the board.

Walker said he had contracted with a groundskeeper from Bath to maintain the cemetery for $8,000 a year. However, no one has signed on to maintain the cemetery for this year.

Riverside Association has about $100,000 in investments, plus $20,000 in cash, according to Walker.

As president, the association had paid Walker — who said he recently began fulfilling the role of secretary and treasurer — $2,000 a year.

“I would donate it right back to the cemetery,” Walker said. “It was just a wash, but I still have to pay taxes on it.”

Walker said there is “quite a learning curve” to the job, whose responsibilities included selling plots, marking future graves for burials, meeting with stone companies, and answering phone calls for people looking for graves.

“The hard thing is not being around,” said Walker, who spends winters in Florida and summers at a camp. “It’s a nuisance. It’s a lot of work. If you’re old and with nothing else to do, that would be one thing. It makes my life difficult.”

He added: “My life is just way too busy to manage the cemetery. I feel like I’ve done my share. I’ve been doing it for 30 years. When I started I was 27 years old. It just seems very unfair.”

Walker said he is not running from his responsibility, but added that he is being “painted into the corner” by the town’s refusal to take over the cemetery, and that he is now contemplating selling Riverside to a private funeral home.

“I’m just a retired man that feels like he’s done his civic duty for long enough,” Walker said. “Maybe I should go see my attorney.”

“He’s the president of the association,” Eldridge said. “He has a responsibility under his association’s rules, and he can’t just assume we would take the cemetery over.”

jswinconeck@timesrecord.com

Brunswick’s view

IN FEBRUARY, Town Attorney Stephen Langsdorf wrote to Scott Walker informing him that the town was under no obligation to take control of the cemetery.

On Wednesday, Langsdorf reaffirmed that statement.

There are legal duties for a municipality to take over cemeteries that have been abandoned for more than 40 years, said Langsdorf, and to help ensure that veterans’ headstones are kept in good condition. The state had mandated that municipalities maintain burial grounds dating prior to 1880, but that law was changed in 2013 making it optional, according to Langsdorf.