Since 1988, John Somers has been the caretaker of the 17-acre Evergreen Cemetery in Caribou.
But he’s in his 80s. His health has reached a point where he cannot continue. It’s time for “somebody to take over,” Somers said.
The job of finding his replacement falls to the cemetery board of directors. But there’s a snag: Evergreen Cemetery, incorporated in 1960, doesn’t have a board of directors, or any of the officers needed to function as a nonprofit corporation.
In fact, the corporation, Evergreen Cemetery Inc., has not held a meeting since 1970. All of its original board of directors are buried there. In order for Somers to step down, a new board and set of officers have to be appointed by a quorum of 17 qualified voters, as the corporation’s bylaws state.
But qualified voters are only those who own a plot or part of a plot at the cemetery. And that’s a problem.
“Most of the owners of the lots are using them presently, so they would not be available to come to the meeting,” Caribou City Manager Penny Thompson said during a July 28 City Council meeting.
In an attempt to overcome that challenge, the city blasted a public notice about the upcoming meeting on its website, Facebook page and the pages of other municipal departments. It will be held at 10 a.m. on Aug. 21 in Multipurpose Room 3 of the Caribou Wellness and Recreation Center.
“[Somers] came in and said, ‘The town’s going to need to take this over,’ because he’ll never be able to get a quorum at a meeting,” Thompson said. “And I said, ‘Challenge accepted.’”
The meeting received nearly immediate interest after it was publicly announced on July 28, Thompson said. As of Aug. 6, 27 people had marked that they were interested in attending on Facebook.
Evergreen Cemetery is one of the biggest cemeteries in Caribou, a city with no municipally owned cemeteries. Reaching a quorum at the Aug. 21 meeting is the first step in ensuring that status.
“I don’t really want to see the city take over the cemetery. They do have funds for perpetual care,” Thompson said. “There are a lot of people that have loved ones in the cemetery that want to see the cemetery continue with that perpetual care.”
