Dear Parishioners,
We recently held our first finance council meeting of the current fiscal year and the following is a summary of what was discussed.
As you have seen in the bulletin updates, our Sunday offertory remains above budget. Last week’s bulletin shows that we are $13,000 above budget YTD. Thank you for the many sacrifices you make to support our parish!
Regarding our second collections, as of August 31, we had just over $2200 in our mission fund. We donated $200 from this fund to help Audrey Giesige with her annual blanket project. Audrey is a senior at Paulding High School and a member of our Y-Disciple program. Every year, she leads an effort to make blankets for children in need and for children in hospitals. Our donation was in the form of gift cards to buy fabric for the blankets.
Through our second collections for seminarians, we now support three seminarians who are studying for our diocese: Andrew Messer, Eric Kaufman, and Kevin McGraw. In conjunction with the Paulding Knights of Columbus, we were able to send $568 to each them recently. This is a little higher than normal because this number includes the last two collections for seminarians. Please join me in praying for them as they continue their studies to one day be priests in our diocese!
At the end of August, our building and maintenance fund contained $27,000. Since that time, one of the air conditioning units at the school died, so we had to replace it for $6,000. Since purchasing the new AC unit, our second collections for this fund have continued to come in, and the current balance of that account is $24,000. One item that we will be addressing in the near future is to resolve the water spot that is gradually getting bigger on the ceiling of the Paulding church. This will simply involve replacing a missing tile on the roof. The cost for this will be $2500. Another project that we will be taking on in the near future is to replace some of the doors in the Antwerp Center. Because the rooms in the Center are all used for PSR, Y-Disciple, and vacation bible school, they must all be compliant with the Church’s regulations for the protection of youth. One of these regulations is that the doors of all of these rooms must have windows. We do not have the cost for this project yet, but I will be sure to update you when we do. Lastly, we ordered a new overhead garage door for the Antwerp garage. The cost of this will be $1740, but we are still waiting the 15 weeks (!) delivery time. On a related note, special thanks go to the volunteers who painted the Antwerp garage and replaced the walk-in door! They did this on their own initiative and did not charge the parish for any of the materials. Thank you!
Special thanks to Cooper Farms for granting Divine Mercy School a $3000 grant for the purposes of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education for our students!
We have the final numbers for our annual Beer and Wine Tasting event. I am happy to say that the event produced a net profit of $10,000. Many thanks to everyone who worked hard to make this event happen and to everyone who attended and made it a truly fun evening! Usually, we raise the money for a specific maintenance project, but because most projects are on hold due to our long-term planning, this money will go into the maintenance fund, as we announced before the event that it would. I will update everyone as to what we will use this money for.
Other accounts:
Divine Mercy School Endowment: $129,000
Vocation Endowment: $127,000
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact myself or Dianne Jones at the parish office.
In Christ,
Fr. Ammanniti
