Good morning/afternoon/evening. I am a fellow parishioner of yours, who currently serves as a member of our Parish (Pastoral/Finance) Council. On behalf of both of these leadership Councils, I ask for a moment of your time to speak with you today about the serious material challenges that are ours as a Parish Family.
In our Sunday Bulletins over the course of this summer we have received information outlining various aspects of the financial challenge that is presently ours. The most urgent parts of this present challenge are repairs that must be made to our buildings in the next two to three years. Roofing experts have told us the roofs on both of our school buildings must be completely replaced. The main school building is approaching thirty years old. The junior high is approaching twenty years old. The roofs are at the end of their life span and patching them will not extend that life span any longer. The junior high roof was so bad that it is being replaced this summer to avoid any further damage to the inside of the building. Additionally, the control panel for the fire alarm system in our schools, which was a pre-owned system when it was installed nearly thirty years ago, can no longer be repaired with replacement parts if ever breaks.
The price tag on these unavoidable repairs is close to $450,000. We have only $400,000 in savings to pay for these things.
Even without the cost of these repairs, it costs us approximately $210,000 per month simply to exist and to do all that we do here as a Parish. Because we have the burden of our construction debt on top of that – at our current rate of giving in the Sunday Offering and at the current rate of tuition – for the fiscal year we just began in July we will have an operating deficit of nearly $150,000. Our monthly debt payment is $23,565. That means that the entire collection from the first Sunday and part of the collection from the second Sunday each month go directly to debt payments.
You’ll remember that in October of 2007, we began the Christmas Club Debt Reduction Fund in the hope of helping the operating budget. Regrettably only 417 of our families have supported that effort since then. Additionally, only 40% of us are supporting our Parish through the Sunday Offering in an amount greater than $2 per week. 34% of us are not supporting our Parish financially at all.
We, your Parish Pastoral Council and Parish Finance Council have met several times this summer about these things. Today we begin the process of coming to you for help! In addition to doing everything we can to increase participation in the Sunday Offering, we are recommending that the Christmas Club for Debt Reduction be expanding to include debt reduction, paying for these major repairs in the next 2 to 3 years, and eventually completing the interior of our Church. In this mail this coming week, you will receive a letter from the Parish Pastoral Council and Parish Finance Council explaining these things in more detail for your private consideration. At the beginning of October, we will celebrate Stewardship Sunday as a Parish. I ask you to join me in beginning today to prayerfully consider what your commitment of time, talent, and treasure to our Parish can best be for the coming year.
If your family has been supporting our Parish through the Sunday Offering and if you have supported the Christmas Club for Debt Reduction in the past, as your fellow parishioner I thank you! Like you, we – the members of your Leadership Councils – are also struggling in our own families and homes because of the economy right now. Nonetheless, just as we each willingly make whatever sacrifices we have to for the sake of our families because we love them, as your fellow parishioner I invite you today to love your Parish Family here at Sts. Joachim and Ann and to begin to prayerfully consider some measure of additional sacrifice that you might make so that we can work together to take care of our spiritual home here.
The challenges we face as a Parish will require sacrifice from all of us. Please don’t consider yourself exempt! WE need YOU! WE need YOUR help! As we begin Mass today, let us pray together for the wellbeing of our Parish!
Thank You for listening!