Monday, June 23, 2014

A Message from Father Carroll regarding the closing of the Fiscal Year.


Brothers and Sisters,

            This weekend is the final weekend of the month and the close of the fiscal year.  Let me begin by once again thanking you for your generosity.  As we close the fiscal year, we will be closing it in the red.  We are projecting our deficit to be around $70,000 - $80,000.

            In order for us to keep from taking out a loan with the diocese, we will be pulling funds out of savings to cover the deficit.  Some of our deficit comes from unpaid tuition.  Taking that into consideration, that part of the deficit will be taken out of the Msgr. Brenner Education Fund.  When the tuition comes in over the summer months we will replenish that account.  The other portion of the deficit will be paid out of our General Parish Savings.  So while we will not be in debt to the diocese, we are operating in a deficit.  In other words, while the end result will show us in the black, we are operating in the red.  As a parish we were truly blessed with two significant bequests.  If it wasn’t for these bequests we would have to take a loan from the diocese.

            Over the last couple months I have been working with the Parish Finance Council to address this concern.  Since March, changes have been made to help us address our operating deficit and other areas of potential cost savings are being carefully studied.  We are working extremely hard to be fiscally prudent.  Yes, in the future, we may have to spend money to ultimately save money.  That is why we are carefully studying our utility bills and our reestablished Long Range Planning Committee is looking at our property.  Once of the challenges we face is that we have a lot of property to maintain (and a lot of underutilized space) and a lot of our buildings are aging which means they will eventually need work to keep them maintained.

            As we close out of fiscal year and look at our current deficit there are signs of hope.  The generosity of this parish is clearly evident.  This year we have surpassed our Lenten Appeal in the pledged amount.  As the Mass schedule changed out weekly offertory has stayed steady.  This is a clear testament of your support.  Once again thank you for your generosity to our parish and as your pastor I am truly grateful for your support of our parish.
 
Sincerely in Christ,
Fr. Carroll

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