Remarks from Father Rick – Parish Center #9

This weekend’s remarks deal more with the business plan of what could be fiscally generated through the renovation project. Of course, I stated last week, the Parish Council and Finance Committee have decided to phase the project and do a pay-as-go renovation. I believe that the potential is here to rent the Parish Center out to not only parishioners but also to the public. By renting the space out to the public, we are generating a new source of income and that can help us to complete the renovation project.

OPERATIONAL PROPOSAL
As mentioned above, the current facility is operated on a volunteer basis. There is no dedicated staff to run the day-to-day operation of the old church building. However, in order to keep the facility in ready to use condition, the building needs to be maintained, utilities kept on, insurance kept in place and grounds attended to. On a monthly basis, it costs about a $4,000 per month in operating expenses for all of the above. So even if we do nothing, there are ongoing expenses for the old church facility.

It is our intent to hire a new employee to over see the operation of the old church facility, and the overall operation of all the facilities of our parish. To date, we have had part time help keep up the new church and coordinate the maintenance of the heating and cooling systems. We will be taking two part time jobs to create one full time job. As mentioned above, we are already paying operational expenses for the old facility. Therefore monthly debt service is the only other new operating expense. Based on a five-year amortization schedule of $200,000, we estimate the monthly payments to be around $4,000.00 per month. Using a conservative estimate of the number of events for which we could rent the hall we are projecting a minimum of $ 15,000 in revenue over and above any cost we would incur. This projected revenue is for use for non-parish events. We already have at least two parish events annually, which will generate $20,000 that would be available for meeting this debt service, and we are confident that the new facility will cause new parish fund raising events to be created. Since we are projecting little, if any, new expenses for operating the building all of this revenue could go to meet the new debt service requirement. As can be seen, we believe that by making the facility available for a fee to any user and increasing our fund raising activities, we can have the renovations paid for in the five-year period, after which time the facility can be used to generate funds for the retirement of the existing debt on our new church.


As you read the above, you will notice the inference to a new employee who oversees the Parish Center. Since last November, the Parish Council has discerned this need and made the suggestion to create a new position on staff that would “oversee” the campus. After discerning what this position would be and do, it was decided to create a staff position - Parish Facilities Manager. This person would evaluate and investigate what the needs are for our parish facilities and how to keep our campus healthy…in a mechanical way. Tom Hartley has agreed to help us with this new job. I will speak more to this new job at another time on another Sunday.

You might be glad to know that there is just one more section left to this letter that was sent to the Diocese. It is a summary. I will include it in next weekend’s bulletin. As always, thanks for pondering these remarks! I hope these updates are keeping you informed of what is going on in the parish. Know of my thoughts and prayers for you and your loved ones.

Father Rick L. Jones, Pastor