"Westchester spent $296,910 through the first 11 months of last year to take care of 254 bodies, an almost 48 percent increase over all of 2007 when it paid for services for 199 bodies.

Rockland’s Department of Social Services spent $85,000 through November of last year on funeral and burial services for the poor, about a 79 percent increase compared with 2007. In Putnam, indigent funeral services cost the county about $19,000 in the same period, about $5,000 more than 2007’s yearly total.

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