PARIS — Selectmen on Monday abandoned a tentative plan to transfer just over an acre of the Cornwall Nature Preserve to the Hillside Cemetery.
Attorney Rob Crawford, working for the town, had asked the Maine Office of the Attorney General whether transferring 1.13 acres of the preserve to the adjacent cemetery would violate Alice Cornwall’s deed to the town. Assistant Attorney General Linda Conti, who oversees public trust issues, said such a conveyance would violate the terms of the deed.
Chairman Robert Kirchherr read Crawford’s letter to the board. “Either the town or the cemetery association would have to show, to the satisfaction of a court, that the trust created by Mrs. Cornwall’s deed, by its terms, is not able to fulfill the grantor’s intentions,” the letter read.
“My first impression of that is, it can’t be done,” Kirchherr said. Other selectmen agreed that the conveyance of land couldn’t happen.
William Burmeister, president of the Hillside Cemetery Association, was at the meeting.
“I’m happy we’ve run the course on it,” Burmeister said. He said Alice Cornwall would have agreed with the plan, but that he understood the town couldn’t pursue the matter further. “I appreciate your consideration,” he told the board.
Burmeister had asked the town to convey part of the 147-acre preserve to the cemetery association, which has run out of plots to sell and is having trouble paying for the cemetery’s upkeep. The historic cemetery is the burial place of Alice Cornwall as well as the family of Hannibal Hamlin.
The proposed section of the nature preserve is along the back edge of the cemetery, and doesn’t contain any of the preserve’s walking trails.
Cornwall’s children had signed letters in support of conveying the land to the nonprofit organization that maintains the cemetery, and there had been some discussion in town on whether the cemetery would pay for the acreage and for the legal costs in arranging the transfer.
The proposal had drawn criticism at recent town meetings by residents who said transferring the land would violate Cornwall’s 1982 deed to the town.
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- Paris selectmen were told that transferring part of the Cornwall Nature Preserve to the Hillside Cemetery, shown, might not hold up in court. Selectmen decided to abandon the plan Monday.
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