By Roger McKinney
Globe Staff Writer
COLUMBUS, Kan. —
Vernon Hill on Monday let the Cherokee County Commission know of his concern that township boards may soon have to buy liability insurance for rural cemeteries.
Hill, a resident of the Melrose community in western Cherokee County, is on the board of the Neosho Township. He said he cares for Fairview Cemetery, near Melrose, and Fly Creek Cemetery, near Faulkner.
Hill said he had received a letter indicating that the townships may need to buy liability insurance. He didn’t initially say who the letter was from, but outside the meeting he said it was from Cherokee County Clerk Crystal Gatewood.
“A lot of us township people are upset,” Hill said, noting that township boards have only enough money to take care of the cemeteries. He said families own individual plots in the cemeteries, and the townships don’t own the cemeteries.
“We don’t own that, so what do we insure?” Hill said. “How do you insure stuff you don’t own?”
He said that after receiving the letter, he contacted members of two or three other township boards.
“We got a little shook,” Hill said of the letter.
Commission Chairman Richard Hilderbrand, an insurance agent, said funeral homes and grave-digging crews usually must carry insurance, but requiring township boards to carry insurance doesn’t make sense.
“Normally, it’s the people who do the work who have to cover the liability,” Hilderbrand said.
The commissioners said they would refer the question to County Counselor Kevin Cure.
Gatewood said after Hill left the meeting that the letter was prompted by a phone call from a company that provides services to area funeral homes. She said the caller told her that the funeral homes wouldn’t work in cemeteries that didn’t carry liability insurance.
Gatewood said the letter also was meant to clarify the mistaken assumption by some on township boards that the cemeteries are covered through the county’s insurance carrier. She said they’re not.
She said she had contacted the Kansas attorney general’s office and determined that there are no legal requirements for rural cemeteries to have liability insurance.
“I just wanted to give them the option to consider insurance,” Gatewood said. “It wasn’t set in stone, and there’s no mandate from the state. It’s not anything mandatory that they have to do.”
Rural cemeteries
According to the Cherokee County clerk’s office, there are 60 cemeteries in the county. Most of them are rural cemeteries that are cared for by township boards.
