MOUNT VERNON – Townships that struggle with tracking their cemetery plots can enlist help from their county Recorder’s Office thanks to a provision of Ohio’s budget legislation pushed by Rep. Darrell Kick (R-Loudonville) and Knox County Recorder Tanner Salyers.
Townships maintain permanent records for those cemetery deeds to plots, but this legislation would allow them to use the Recorder’s Office to handle those records, Salyers said.
Salyers told the Mount Vernon News that some townships use maps, others use small cards like index cards, others have paper files and some have an online system.
Bigger townships like Liberty Township in Delaware County have a big enough population to support staff to handle those records, so it’s unlikely they will take advantage of this, Salyers said.
Knox County has 22 townships, all of which are relatively small, he said. The fiscal officer and the trustees run the operations.
“A lot of times, this maintenance of these records is a burden,” Salyers said.
They’ve heard horror stories such as deeds can’t be found or plots double-booked. The problems come from a lack of consistency in keeping records, mainly when a new person takes office.
“It’s not like there’s a lot of on-the-job training or really any sort of transition process. And they’re just basically rebuilding from the ground up and hoping that they’re doing it right,” he said.
Instead of doing that, Salyers and Kick spoke with trustees in and out of Knox County, the Ohio Township Association, several legislators and many county recorders. He said they saw an overlap of duty with the Recorder’s Office regarding keeping and maintaining permanent records, particularly for real estate. And the cemetery plot is real estate.
Maintaining cemetery records “keeps the highway from being plowed over someone’s final resting place,” Salyers said.
The legislation aims to lift the burden off the township at no cost. The township still sells the plots and receives payments for them.
The person buying one or multiple plots would be charged $34 to record them and receive documents.
