CHINA NEWS: Voters to consider ordinance changes

by Mary Grow

At the March 25 town business meeting, China voters will decide on replacement or amended ordinances on three different topics, cemetery management, solid waste disposal and land use.

Article 34, dealing with the 1985 cemetery ordinance and a proposed replacement, is new. Solid waste and land use ordinance changes are being presented again after voters rejected them in November 2016.

Under Art. 34, voters are asked to repeal the 1985 Cemetery Administration and Maintenance Ordinance and replace it with the longer China Cemetery Ordinance.

The 1985 ordinance states its purpose is to create a three-person board of trustees appointed by town selectmen to be in charge of administering and maintaining town cemeteries. The trustees are to appoint a superintendent and determine his pay; sell lots and accept trust funds for maintaining lots and other monetary gifts; and under the selectmen’s supervision spend cemetery funds.

The superintendent has “authority to supervise all burials, interments, disinterments, maintenance and care of public cemeteries.”

The proposed replacement ordinance vests authority over town cemeteries in the town manager and a cemetery committee of at least three people appointed annually by the selectmen. The committee is responsible for spending cemetery funds. A superintendent appointed by the town manager with the selectmen’s approval is to “superintend the digging of all graves, the burial of all bodies from said cemeteries, or from place to place in said cemeteries.”

The ordinance specifies that remains must be in a casket and a cement vault, with no more than one casket and up to three cremains in each plot. The selectmen set lot prices and regulations.

The ordinance would allow regulated hours of access, and contains a list of activities prohibited in cemeteries, including consuming intoxicating beverages, disorderly conduct, hunting, vandalism, letting pets roam at large and failing to pick up dog feces.

The proposed amendments to the Solid Waste Flow Control Ordinance and the Solid Waste Disposal Ordinance are in warrant articles 44 and 45. Major changes, repeated from November, include:

• In the Flow Control Ordinance, substitution of the planned Fiberight facility for the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company’s Orrington facility as the destination for the town’s combustible and biodegradable waste, and addition of a definition of “volunteers.”
• In the Solid Waste Disposal Ordinance, allowing disposal of out-of-town waste in accordance with agreements signed by the selectmen, like the agreement with Palermo that came into effect Jan 1. The revised ordinance also changes the transfer station days of operation from Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday to Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Authority for selectmen to make that and future schedule changes was and still is in the ordinance; selectmen have already changed the days, effective in early December 2016.

Solid Waste Disposal Ordinance provisions that have been reworded without changing their meaning include:

• the attendants’ authority to ban anyone who does not comply with the ordinance or with their orders, to reject hazardous waste or waste not separated as the ordinance requires and if necessary to call for police assistance;
• the requirement to obtain and display a decal from the town office; and
• mandatory recycling of metal, newsprint, magazines and cardboard.