SCARBOROUGH — With the trees cut down and the ground torn up, the 15-foot-wide strip of land is something of a gaping wound.

It’s where Wayne and Colleen Hall have started building a driveway to their home off Black Point Road.

Unfortunately, it runs alongside two memorial gardens where their neighbor, Julie Claffey, says she buried the ashes of her late husband, Mark. She’s trying to stop the driveway project.

“It disturbs the whole quality of life and peacefulness of someone’s final resting place,” Claffey said. “I feel like I’ve been violated.”

Claffey’s efforts to prevent the Halls from completing a town-approved driveway are at the heart of an emotional neighborhood dispute that pits one landowner’s rights against another’s interpretation of Maine’s private cemetery laws. The controversy also raises questions about what counts as a burying ground and whether the establishment of a family plot can foil a neighbor’s development plans.

“It’s shady how it all happened, that Mr. Claffey’s ashes are buried there,” Wayne Hall said. “It’s irresponsible for her to bury someone in a way that affects our property rights.”

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The dispute erupted last September, when surveyors staked out the strip of land, which runs from the Halls’ house lot on Stone Road, a private way, to Black Point Road (Route 207). Wayne Hall grew up in the neighborhood. The Halls had applied to build direct access to the larger road when their house was constructed in 2007. Finally, they were going to do it.

The Halls live behind Claffey. The 200-foot-long strip of land runs along her property at 249 Black Point Road – just a few feet from the white clapboard cottage that she and her husband bought in 1987, and beside two memorial gardens where she says she buried his cremated remains after he succumbed to throat cancer in 2011.

Claffey saw the surveyors working, asked what they were doing and got angry, she admits. After they left, she went outside and pulled up all the stakes. Colleen Hall saw what Claffey had done and called the police. An officer came and instructed Claffey to replace the stakes, which she says she did. The incident was recorded in the police log on Sept. 19.

“I got upset and I pulled them out,” said Claffey, a social worker. “I didn’t know what they were for. There was no communication.”

In October, Claffey registered the locations of the memorial gardens at the town clerk’s office. Dotted with ferns, hostas, lilies of the valley and other shade-loving plants, the natural-looking plots have no formal markers or headstones. The Halls say no one notified them that the memorial gardens had been registered.

SPRING BRINGS LEGAL MANEUVERING

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Things remained quiet through the winter months until April, when Claffey found a letter from the Halls tucked in her front door. It said that a contractor would be there the next day to start taking down trees and removing the white picket and stockade fencing that ran beside Claffey’s house and backyard, but was on the Halls’ property.

That’s when Claffey reached out to town officials for help. She pointed to a state law that prohibits excavation within 25 feet of a known burial site. The town stopped work on the property long enough to figure out what was going on.

To further protect the memorial gardens, Claffey submitted a written description of her “family burying ground” to the town clerk, and her lawyer recorded the burial plots with the Cumberland County Registry of Deeds, both on May 1.

“I didn’t want them to be disturbed. Would you?” Claffey asked rhetorically. “It’s his final resting place. That’s all I have left.”

Town officials were no help, according to Claffey. After consulting with the town’s attorney and getting letters from lawyers representing both Claffey and the Halls, Zoning Administrator Brian Longstaff informed Claffey that the town would no longer intercede on her behalf.

Joseph Goodman, lawyer for the Halls, argued in his letter that Claffey’s memorial gardens don’t count as burial sites as defined and protected under Maine’s cemetery laws because cremated remains don’t meet the legal definition of a human body.

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“Therefore, this statute does not prohibit my client from engaging in lawful activities on his adjacent property,” Goodman wrote.

STAYING OUT OF MURKY TERRITORY

Town Manager Tom Hall, who isn’t related to Wayne and Colleen Hall, said he and other town officials have decided to use their discretion and avoid venturing into the murky territory of judging what constitutes a valid burying ground.

Town officials are further reticent to take action because Claffey registered the memorial gardens several years after she says they were established and after the Halls demonstrated their intent to develop their property, the town manager said.

“Undoubtedly Mrs. Claffey has personal feelings about what’s happening,” Tom Hall said. “Given the timing of her actions, it could be viewed as an effort to obstruct what Mr. (Wayne) Hall wants to do.”

The town manager said it would be up to Claffey to pursue a civil complaint in court to block her neighbors’ development plans. Claffey said she can’t afford to spend more on lawyer’s fees.

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PROJECT MOVING AHEAD FOR NOW

Wayne and Colleen Hall’s sympathy for their neighbor is wearing thin. They say Claffey’s efforts have cost them in legal fees, construction delays and additional surveying to properly reset the boundary stakes.

“She’s essentially trying to steal property,” said Wayne Hall, a heating contractor. “It’s my legal right to develop land that I own.”

The Halls hope to complete the driveway soon. The last of the trees were taken down in mid-May and the Halls’ contractor is expected to return as soon as he’s available to finish grading and paving.

The driveway will be a modest 9 feet wide, the Halls said, and nicely landscaped, like the property around their house.

They promise that Claffey’s property will be undisturbed.


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