Dear parishioners,
We recently had our last finance council meeting of the fiscal year (diocesan fiscal year is July 1- June 30). Below is a summary of what was discussed.
As I mentioned in another bulletin article, we budgeted a total of $11,000 for our Easter collections. Our actual collected amount came in $157 over budget. This means that we are $268 under our total budgeted amount for this fiscal year’s Christmas and Easter collections. This is really good considering how Covid affected Mass attendance over this past year. Thank you for your continued support of our parish!
Our school continues to operate very efficiently. Student receipts (tuition payments) are on track to be received in full by the end of the fiscal year. Also, we have been able to keep our school operational expenses down due to a handful of grants that we have been awarded, in addition to some Covid relief money that the federal government made available specifically for schools.
As I mentioned in previous financial updates, our overall parish expenses have been very low this year. A number of items factor into this. Firstly, liturgical expenses were very low this year because we have not needed to make many orders for hosts or wine during Covid. Secondly, because we have not been doing many parish events throughout Covid, we have not spent as much on utilities as we normally would. We also have not needed to clean facilities such as the Antwerp Center and the Payne Hall as much as we normally would have, which means we did not expend as much as normal on supplies and labor in this regard. Lastly, we did not take on as many capital maintenance projects as we anticipated this year because we were trying to be cautious during Covid, not knowing where the pandemic would take us or how long it would last. For these reasons, our net income through April comes to $306,000. This is wonderful news! However, because this number is contingent on all the factors above, we should not expect this to be a normal number for the end of the fiscal year in the future. All that being said, thank you once again for your generous support of our parish!
To the point mentioned above, we also did not take on as many capital maintenance projects as normal because of my big announcement at the Masses on May 22 and 23. That is, the announcement about putting together a committee of parishioners to do some long-term planning for our parish. I could not justify committing to any non-urgent projects while knowing that we need to discuss matters as a parish community. The finance council has supported me in this endeavor. In fact, the majority of the recent finance council meeting was spent evaluating the most recent list of capital maintenance projects that need to be done in the coming years. As I mentioned at Mass on the 22nd and 23rd, Fr. Poggemeyer did an excellent job of maintaining our campuses during his six years here. Because he did, we have an accurate number of what it takes to maintain them well. During that time, our parish had to spend $950,000 in fixing and improving our buildings. The current list of maintenance projects includes $1.7M in work that still needs done to our buildings. Not all of these projects are equal in magnitude or importance, but they will need to be addressed in the coming years.
Thank you in advance for your patience with me as I meet with the long-term planning committee and we have some difficult discussions regarding what the best way forward for our parish is. As I mentioned when I announced all this, please contact me at any time if you have any questions or concerns about any of this.
God bless you all!
Fr. Ammanniti
