Doubts about cemetery plot ownership

“We need to avoid selling the same plot twice,” Orcas Cemetery Commissioner Tim White said, “or burying someone where someone else is buried.”

White made the remark at a meeting of the commission Aug. 3. He was responding to the discovery that someone had been erroneously buried in a plot that was owned by another family. White, in fact, was the one who sold a plot earlier this year to the Cundy family even though it was already owned by the Nigretto family. The two parties have since resolved their problem by reconfiguring the plots, and now the Cemetery District is looking at ways to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Commissioner Pierrette Guimond says much of the problem stems from the fact that the cemetery is 90 years old, and that prior to 1984, when it became a tax district, the cemetery was in private hands. She has since been researching all the records in an attempt to know exactly who owns each plot, and where everybody is buried. It won’t be an easy task. Long-time islander Richard Schneider said, “We don’t know where some were buried” many years ago. “You have a real problem,” he told the commissioners.

In 1997, former Orcas islander Bruce Kekbbekus told The Sounder that he had purchased four burial plots, each for $200, when he buried his daughter there. But, he said, he never received acknowledgement from the district that he owned the other three. Kebbekus’ situation has since been resolved to his satisfaction, Guimond said.

Back in the cemetery’s early years, record keeping was anything but perfect. Former Cemetery District Commissioner Todd Shaner called it “lackadaisical.” White said it contained “many inconsistencies.”

White acknowledged that cemetery district commissioners are aware that the problem still exists, but uncertain about what to do about it. They could keep “winging it and hope for the best, solve the problems as they come up, or they could close it,” he said.

Or, said Teri Nigretto, the cemetery district could limit sales of plots to the newer portion of the property, which was donated to the cemetery district in 1985 by the Cadden family, and which now contains 226 plots that are available for purchase. Shaner, who stepped down last year, said this was what the former commission did. “We pretty much sent people to the new section only,” he said.

The plot which was sold to the Cundy family was located in the older portion of the cemetery.

Attorney Lou Wallenberg said the commissioners had the authority to undertake a process through which the district could obtain from the courts what is known as a “declaratory judgment.” If achieved, it would enable the cemetery district to ascertain legal ownership of each plot. The process would involve placing a legal advertisement in one or more newspapers, in which it would be announced that those with proof of ownership of one or more burial plots could submit them to the district. After the time period elapses, the district could legally declare who owns all the plots that have been sold to date.

Guimond has proposed that only the chair and the district’s clerk (Ann Lister) have the authority to sell plots, but that has yet to be approved by the commission.

Cemetery commissioners will discuss this matter further at their next meeting Oct. 5 at 5 p.m. at the library.

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