According to reports, the final bill for the funeral of Whitney Houston is $187,000 and will be billed to the residents of Newark, N.J. The very public funeral attracted hundreds, if not thousands of fans and service attendees and caused the local police department to erect barriers to prevent unruliness.
The bill is the overtime pay for officers who worked during the funeral, representing five percent of the department’s yearly budget.
So now locals are questioning who is going to foot the bill, being that they didn’t plan for this to happen or even vote for a tax increase to cover celebrity funerals.
One resident spoke to CBS news, mildly upset about the whole situation, explaining that it should be the responsibility of those who put the funeral on.
“If they wanted to go that far, do that much, they should have been the ones providing for it.”
Police were called in to help maintain control over the vast crowd which had amassed outside of Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church where the funeral was held and the justification and necessity of their presence was conveyed by city council member Mildred Crump, who was quoted by CBS:
“If they [Newark Police] had not been there someone may have been trampled, seriously hurt.”
