This week’s bulletin contains an insert with our annual year-end financial summary. I hope you take some time to look through this statement. Financial transparency is very important to me, as it’s crucial that you know how your contributions are being used. I am grateful for the support that you give to our parish, and we are careful how we spend every penny.
Overall, this was a positive year for parish finances. Here are some things that are important to note as you look at this summary:
· The School CHOICE program has had a favorable impact on the school’s financials. The most recent expansion of the program both increased enrollment and allowed us to provide access to a Christ the King education at a substantially reduced cost for the majority of our students. As a result of the additional funds provided, we have been able to reduce the parish subsidy to the school, significantly increase teacher salaries (an important investment in our school and our students), and address deferred maintenance issues we previously did not have the funds to do so.
· At the same time, we realize that there is no guarantee that the School CHOICE program will continue in its current form indefinitely. While the program has helped alleviate some near-term financial pressure, our greater reliance on it as a source of funding introduces some level of risk going forward. Our current philosophy is to monitor for any potential changes and to use the additional funding to address deferred maintenance which was not possible when we were running budget deficits. We are grateful that we are finally in a position to address those.
· In a previous bulletin, you saw a year-end summary from St. Vincent de Paul. Your generosity to this outreach to the poor has been outstanding, and that is reflected on our financial report by significantly higher-then-budgeted income under Other Funds, and higher-then-budgeted expenses under Social.
· The other expense category that was significantly higher than budgeted is our Pre-Kindergarten program for 3 year-olds. Enrollment was so high that we had to add a second class, and so expenses were almost double what we budgeted.
· Also, it’s important that you know that we’re still giving 1% of our collections to Holy Cross Parish here in town. For the last fiscal year, your contributions to Holy Cross totaled $11,848.33.
The most striking thing about these statements, of course, is the surplus. This surplus has enabled us to tackle a lot of badly-needed deferred maintenance and capital projects. (The cost of most of these projects is not reflected on the financial report, since these projects are capitalized and therefore accounted for separately.) Here are some of the projects we’ve tackled over the past year:
· In the 2023-24 fiscal year, we spent $165K to replace the rectory roof, garage roof and church light panel, while repairing damage to interior bricks in the church.
· So far in the 2024-25 fiscal year, we have spent $220K to repair the awning in the school entrance, replace the church roof and redo a significant portion of the parking lot (back near the dumpster).
· We have several major capital expenses on the horizon, so it is my hope that this improved financial outlook will allow us to make these much-needed improvements without additional fundraising. Here are some of these expenses that we are anticipating in the next couple of years:
- Look at the plumbing in the older sections of the school
- Continue to repair the parking lots and replace curbs and cement that are trip hazards
- Upgrade obsolete BAS (Building Automation System)Control Software
- Continue to replace classroom carpets
- Replace walkie talkie radios for the school
- Parish Office upgrades hope to include plumbing and floors
It’s also important to note that this surplus has not been used to finance our vestibule expansion project. Those finances are accounted for on the balance sheet rather than the income statement (the latter of which is the basis for this report). As I write this, the total projected cost to complete the project will only exceed our total funds raised by roughly $100,000 (I’m incredibly pleased with that, given the scope of the project and the volatility of the construction market these days), so we will only have to draw minimal funds from operating income in order to pay off the vestibule.
I am grateful to all of those people who are responsible for managing our parish finances and facilities, especially Jennifer Snyder (Business Manager), Leslie Burns(Facility Manager) and Jamie Demitruk (from Cressy Property Management). I’m also grateful to our Finance Council, who generously give their time and expertise to review our budget and financial statements while giving us expert advice on many different elements of our parish finances: Nathan Baumgartner, TJ Brecht, Danny Conroy, Samanta Dhoore, Molly Kelly, John Miller, Concha Prado-Grimmer, Greg O’Donnell (School Board Rep), Chris Skoczylas, Shawn Stevens (who has just rotated off the Council after 9 years of dedicated service!), John Szobocsan and Leslie Yates.
Ultimately, all of our finances, facilities and other resources are important for one reason and one reason only, and that is how they support our work of building up the kingdom and leading souls to Christ.
Please continue to pray that we will use these resources wisely while keeping our focus where it belongs: on the new life won for us by Christ.
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