President’s Report May 2011

Now that we have completed our Stewardship Campaign including the many discussions of what the church means to us, I reflect on not only a great job by all involved, but also the inevitable tough decisions we had to make due to limited resources. By the Budget Meeting on April 17, we had identified only 97% of our target pledge figure for the 2011-12 budget, meaning your Finance Committee spent many hours determining how to present a balanced budget. This is not an easy task and forces us to consider priorities based on our community values.

As a diverse community, we don’t always agree on specifics, but we are able to discuss them in a sensitive and respectful manner. As Rev. Millie reminded us in her sermon that day, Standing in Beloved Community, “our hearts yearn for peace, acceptance, and love; a place where we belong – where, bringing our best selves, we are reminded of the highest possibilities of human nature; given a vision of hope and dedication to service; to decipher meaning and value; and to grow in spirit beyond our singular selves; where we are challenged, to stand with one another, to be the change that we hope to see”.

Keeping in mind that the church budget reflects our values and is a tool to accomplish what is important to us, the budget was developed through input from many members of the congregation. Starting in January, with budget submissions from Committee Chairs, the Finance Committee (the Board Executive) determined the target budget for our Stewardship Campaign. Then, based on the resulting pledge figure, the Finance Committee makes the final hard decisions based on what we want to accomplish over the next year.

Though only in her first year as Treasurer, Lise Desrochers (a Certified General Accountant), was extremely helpful in analyzing revenues and expenses for the past few years and determining where we could make adjustment. After juggling desired payroll increases, programming levels, building and property costs, and all the other expenses in owning and operating a church, the Finance Committee feels confident we have arrived at a positive but conservative budget.

Some highlights from the 2011-12 budget:

First of all, we are decreasing our annual mortgage payments. The approx. $4800 decrease in mortgage payments annually allows us to increase the staff payroll budgets to keep pace with provincial inflation, to increase our Director of Religious Exploration's (DRE) hours to better reflect the realities of the job, and to keep Millie's salary in pace with suggested UUA guidelines for our congregation size.

It is very important to realize that, though our mortgage payments will decrease from $45,600 in 2010 to $40,800 in 2011-12, we will pay more toward the principal  and less to interest than we did this past year! Due to the lower variable interest rate obtained in January/11, we will pay off $8,000 more toward the principal than in 2010 and pay almost $13,000 less in interest payments.

Very important in a growing church, though our pledge total is level with last year’s, we have been able to increase our Programs expense budget by 2%. In addition, we increased the Administration and decreased the Properties expense budgets to more accurately reflect actual expenses. As an example, though it seems counter intuitive, next year we will pay almost $4000 less for natural gas to heat our building than we did in 2008-09.

Now that the budget has been approved by the congregation, we are all responsible to execute the budget plan - ensuring we generate the anticipated revenue and spend within budgets; and, when necessary, make adjustments if circumstances change during the year. 2011-12 is going to be a great year!

Did you know?

The Canadian Unitarian Council Annual Conference and Meeting takes place in Toronto over the May long weekend and this year marks the 50th anniversary of the CUC. It looks like an action packed weekend of workshops, networking, and good food and we will be well represented by some of our youth, youth advisor, Jim Gardiner, and a number of members including your four delegates (based on our congregation size) Rev. Millie and Roger Rochester, Leuba Franko, and me. Our DRE, Andrea James, will be going early to also participate in professional development and Millie will be staying afterward to do the same with her fellow ministers from across Canada. It promises to be a great weekend!

In faith, Craig Edwards