KENT, Conn.—Monday night, April 6, the selectmen tackled the delicate problem of how to adjust the salary of the cemetery sexton down by about a one-third while still acknowledging the superior job being done by the current employee.
The issue arose out of a decision made two years ago to transfer the duties of the independent Kent Cemetery Association to a town Cemetery Committee. Because the association was composed of volunteers, it was unclear how many hours the retiring sexton devoted to the myriad of tasks associated with the position.
With no firm pay guidelines, the selectmen set an annual salary of $28,000 with the proviso that they would revisit the sum later when they had more data. After the first year, they still did not feel they had a firm grip on how many hours the sexton worked and decided to leave the salary untouched and ask for better information for this year’s budget.
During budget preparations this spring, Selectman Lynn Harrington analyzed the information presented and concluded the sexton is being paid about $75 an hour. She calculated what he might earn at different per-hour rates and determined that even at the highest rate she considered—$45 an hour—he would gross only $16,200.
After discussion at a previous selectmen’s meeting, the board compromised, setting the line item at $18,000, the number that was sent to the Board of Finance.
This week, members of the Cemetery Committee attended a special meeting of the selectmen to advocate strongly for returning his salary to the former amount. They argued that much work has been done to improve the condition of the town’s six cemeteries in the past two years and attributed most of that progress to the diligence of the sexton.
Jane Hanley, former president of the Kent Cemetery Association and a member of the current committee, said that when the association was preparing to dissolve “we spent quite a lot of time talking about the future. We were so lucky to have had Tammy and Bill Potter, but they did it as volunteers and when it came time to pass the torch, we worried about finding someone with the same passion.”
She added that at that time, the neighboring town of Brookfield had lost its sexton “and bodies were piling up. We were kind of petrified that we would end up in the same situation and talked a lot about how the new person would be compensated.”
She said salaries for sextons in the state vary, but that the average is $55,000 a year for a full-time position. She detailed some of the special qualities needed for a sexton, including such basics as record keeping, selling plots, guiding families through the burial process, maintaining legal records, arranging for the actual burials, handling deliveries of headstones and maintenance of the cemeteries.
Beyond that, the association members wanted someone with a knowledge of local families, a vested interest in history, the ability to be flexible in the amount of time worked, the ability to research and map the cemeteries and an “ability to see above and beyond.”
They found all these qualities, they say, in the current sexton, Brent Kallstrom, a local farmer who had previous experience as a sexton.
After citing the range of responsibilities the job entails, Cemetery Committee member Bernadette Ellegard reported, “We’re finding families are turning less to funeral homes and turning to direct burial. The sexton is now doing some of the work done by funeral directors. We’re also moving away from handwritten maps, which are ancient and difficult to decipher and which involve a lot of cleaning up.”
Kallstrom referred to his work as a “one-stop shop.” “Sometimes people have a funeral home; sometimes I am the funeral director,” he said. “I work with monument companies, diggers and concrete pourers. The committee has been great. We’ve identified so many areas—we’ve found bodies that were not marked and other places that had some spaces available.”
He said that, while family demands vary, he spends a lot of time on the phone with the bereaved and with the service providers they will need.
“There is a committee that would be lost,” said committee member Kevin Place, who remarked that the group had much to learn over the past two years. “He’s not on a learning curve, he was there. He applied for a position with a $28,000 salary, and now he’s looking at a haircut of a third of that. This was a promised salary position and was basis of his acceptance for position.”
The selectmen, however, said it had been clear that the original salary would be reviewed as it became evident what the position entailed. “In 2024, it was said that his hours would not exceed 29 hours a week because 30 hours is full-time,” said Harrington. “The employee averages 22 hours a month, not 29 a week. When you make it an average of 20 hours a month [to factor in] seasonality, all of the pay levels I figured came in under $15,000 a year. It’s hard to justify $75 an hour when we are cutting other people.”
Ellegard said more accurate hours are now being kept and show increased usage. Kallstrom promised he would start keeping track of telephone calls he might take while he is out in his fields and the like to give a more detailed idea of hours worked.
But he resisted First Selectman Eric Epstein’s insistence that he use the phone app time clock that the town is moving to. Kallstrom said it would be time consuming to clock in and out for every call he makes and added that he does a lot of the preparatory work for funerals from his home at night. Epstein admonished, “If we go to the online app, you will have to use it. You can enter your hours at the end of the day.”
Kallstrom was also told that he should enter his mileage and out-of-pocket expenses for reimbursement. “The town has to know how much this department costs,” said Selectman Lynn Mellis Worthington, who advocated for going to the Board of Finance and asking that his salary be reinstated.
The selectmen decided to retain the $18,000 line item currently in the budget and to make the sexton’s pay an hourly at $50 an hour. Committee members worried about what would happen if his hours went over the allowance and Epstein said the town would have to find extra money.
Discussion turned to the Cemetery Committee’s Perpetual Fund. Monies received for the sale of plots and from permits go into this fund which may be used for signage and other improvements. It was suggested that some of this money be directed toward the sexton’s salary to pay for overages, but committee chair Lorry Schiesel worried that this might deplete the Perpetual Fund in about 10 years.
She noted that simply taking the average of $10,000 in revenues and directing it to help balance the budget “would protect the bulk of the Perpetual Fund.”
“But if he doesn’t use it, the problem is that it would then go to the General Fund rather than into the Perpetual Fund,” she added. “There is that consideration.”
The selectmen in no way disparaged Kallstrom’s work. “The cemeteries haven’t looked as good, ever,” said Epstein. “But we need to do due diligence with what was left to us [by the previous administration].”
Harrington added, “There is no doubt the committee picked the right person, but it still hard to justify $75 an hour and this position was always going to be reviewed. It seems like that wasn’t communicated well.
Worthington moved to approach the finance board to make money available from the Perpetual Fund to cover any possible overage.
