As volunteers ‘age out,’ municipality takes control of rural Norfolk cemeteries

Sprawling Delhi cemetery will add 80 burials each year to already overworked department

With volunteer boards dying to get out of the cemetery business, Norfolk County needs more staff to handle the coming influx of burials.

Eleven abandoned cemeteries have come under the county’s ownership since 2018 as the volunteers who run them “age out” and cannot find fresh blood to take over, Norfolk’s supervisor of cemeteries, David Drobitch, told council at a recent meeting.

Managing these additional cemeteries — as municipalities must do by provincial law — has taxed Norfolk’s five-person cemeteries team.

“We have fallen behind,” said Drobitch, whose department is hundreds of hours behind on keeping Norfolk’s 45 active cemeteries in good condition.

“We’re not meeting our regulatory requirements in certain areas,” he said. “The short answer is too much workload.”

Norfolk’s cemeteries got poor marks during a January engagement session, where representatives from the funeral home and monument industries told staff the poor condition of some sites prompted unimpressed customers to go elsewhere.

The abandonment of Delhi Cemetery — where an average of 80 residents are laid to rest annually — this year will increase county-run burials by 40 per cent and push the already overworked cemeteries team several thousand hours into the red.

“Delhi, operationally, represents a tipping point,” said Drobitch, who asked council for $178,100 to hire a second cemeteries administrative co-ordinator and create a floater maintenance position to help the department get back on track and absorb the 6.5-hectare Delhi cemetery. To soften the budgetary blow, the department will cut $46,800 in summer student salaries.

Delhi was run by a private volunteer-led board that contracted the county to do excavations.

“Right now there’s one person there holding it together,” and he wants to retire, Drobitch said.

By assuming control of the Delhi cemetery — which will be Norfolk’s second-largest municipally run cemetery — the county will receive the $100,000 in the board’s operating account. There is also just over $500,000 in a perpetual care fund, but the county can only use the interest to pay for monument care and groundskeeping.

Beefing up Norfolk’s cemeteries department will pay off as more cemeteries are abandoned and left for the county to run, council heard. Staff have identified 34 such possible sites.

By assuming control of the Delhi cemetery — which will be Norfolk’s secondlargest municipally run cemetery — the county will receive the $100,000 in the board’s operating account