LIBERTY — Months after acquiring a new asset for the township, trustees made a series of moves to make sure things were properly managed from a fiscal standpoint.

Trustees at Monday’s regular meeting approved amending a motion establishing a cemetery endowment fund for the Belmont Park Cemetery, which is 30 acres of developed cemetery land that the township began assuming responsibilities for under the Ohio Revised Code in June.

The new resolution makes it so the $241,832 initially appropriated toward it instead goes into a permanent fund, a correction Law Director Cherry Poteet said was necessary after the state said the funds shouldn’t be in an investment trust fund.

Trustees also approved transferring $125,000 from the new fund to another cemetery fund, which Fiscal Officer Matthew Connelly said can only be used for maintenance, improvements and beautification.

“Part of that $125,000, once it’s put into that 2042 Belmont Park Cemetery Fund, we’ll repay the advance from last year that wasn’t paid by the end of last year,” Connelly said. “When I talked to the auditors, they said ‘You actually have 12 months to pay it off. You don’t have to pay it off at the end of last year.'”

Connelly said the remaining $36,000 to $40,000 is what the township needs in the fund — along with the money the cemetery earns itself — to last the whole year.

“It’s anticipated to cover the expenses in addition to what it makes on its own through the sale of cemetery lots, inurnments and foundations,” Connelly said. “We receive the income from that to help pay for the two salaries and this month’s expenses, but we needed an additional $36,000 to pay for all of those expenses for the whole year of 2026.”

With the next resolution, $89,000 from the 2042 fund to repay the township’s general fund, the needed startup funds were being restored to their proper place, Connelly said.

With nearly a year having passed since the township obtained the cemetery property, Connelly said after the meeting that officials have discussed applying for grants available through the state.

“At the recent (Ohio Township Association) conference in Columbus, there was a cemetery management information systems booth that I visited, and she had a lot of good information about some grants that she’s forwarding me,” Connelly said. “The other things we’ve thought about were like a pet cemetery, a sprinkle garden for those who are cremated, things like that, that we could use those sources of revenue to help fund it.”

Connelly said the township is finally receiving the full amount of the cemetery trust endowment fund from the bank, which was transferred to the township by the Belmont Park Cemetery Association.

Connelly said officials plan on applying for the Cemetery Grant Fund from the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Division of Real Estate and Professional Licensing, which four nonprofit cemeteries in Mahoning County communities received last year.

“We applied last year and did not get it, but now that we have the Belmont Park Cemetery, we have a better chance of getting it. Plus, we have three cemeteries now,” Connelly said.