New Philadelphia, Ohio (WJER) - New Philadelphia leaders plan to use their recently approved cemetery endowment fund to revitalize the city’s burial grounds system. 

Cemetery Committee Chair Aimee May says council recently agreed to have the engineering work done for phase one of the cemetery master plan, now with the addition of a 5-acre plot for cemetery purposes on Delaware Drive. May says they’ll start with the demolition of the cemetery headquarters at the East Avenue Cemetery.

“We’ll put in some additional in-ground burials for the need that we have for that as well as creating an office building in the Delaware Drive cemetery because we’re tearing down the existing,” she says.

May says with more than $250,000 in the cemetery endowment fund, they plan to use that money to cover Phase 1, and possibly the following phases.

“We’re going to start with the East Avenue cemetery opening up, there’s about I believe it’s 120 in-ground burials plus the niches for the cremations, so the money that we generate from those sales will help us build additional at the new cemetery,” she says.

New Philadelphia picked up their cemetery development efforts recently after the state approved us of their endowment fund last month. 

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