The Policy Board is looking forward to Sunday meetings after both services in order to provide information regarding the church’s financial situation and it’s subsequent need for action.
In preparation for those meetings on Sunday, we are providing you with some base line information and facts now on which you can base your questions and concerns.
We spoke with the congregation in February and sent a letter and postcard noting that our budget shortfall at that time was $145,000. As we noted in our recent letter, the church is facing a shortfall of about $85,000 in our pledges for the fiscal year that began January 1.
The shortfall is particularly large this year, but we have been struggling with deficits for several years, and the fiduciary responsibility of the Policy Board is to seek a budget this year that will put us on a firmer financial foundation.
What the Policy Board has been doing:
Using four guiding principles for considering financial decisions:
● Our 2008 budget must be balanced and not exceed our income.
● The budget must be aligned with the goals of the church as driven by the needs and energies of the entire congregation
● It must allow for the adequate upkeep of our buildings
● It must provide fair compensation for paid staff
In addition, after much research, the PB is committed to replacing Rev. Jean Brown who is retiring. You may know that though Jean is paid for a half time position, this is a recent change and for many years Jean had been at 30+ hours per week, with a full load of pastoral care. You may not know that we are the only large UU congregation in the country (around the 600 member mark) that does not have two full time ordained ministers to serve the many and varied needs of a congregation our size. The UUA has advised us that it would be next to impossible to find a minister who could afford and be willing to relocate to West Hartford for less than a full time position.
We have also been focusing on the following:
● Increasing unmet pastoral care needs due to understaffing
● Increasing unmet support for adult education, member services, social justice and community outreach
● A music program which relies heavily on paid positions (3/4 time Dir; 3 additional paid choir directors with a budget of $9,450; 4 paid soloists with a budget of $15,000 and a budget for instrumentalists throughout the year) with an overall budget of $82,000.00.
● A children’s religious education program serving approximately 165 children with a full time RE director and a 20 hour a week assistant with an overall budget of $97,000.00.
● Fixed costs (bare bones) for keeping the building open, running, and in decent repair of $175,721.00.
● 7.5% cut to non-personnel costs, a reduction to our dues to UUA and CBD and possible ways to reduce custodial and maintenance contracts.
What the Policy Board is NOT doing:
● Disbanding any music programs. We are saying we need to adopt a different music program model used by other UU churches, which relies less on paid positions.
● Tapping the Endowment fund to balance budget. We already take a 5.5% draw from the fund every year. Relying on the Fund to shore up inadequate financial support from current members violates the intent of the Endowment Fund. And we currently owe the endowment $160,000 for past borrowings.
As a point of information, our current fiscal year budget is $771,715, of which 81% is funded from pledges. Also, the additional cost for a full time minister will add approximately $20,000 to our budget this year. A part time associate minister would require us to dedicate all of that minister’s time to pastoral care and would not enable us to fulfill the unmet needs noted above. It would also still leave us with a deficit of $70,000. This amount would still require cuts in areas noted above.
This is not meant to be, nor can it include, all of the information we have been diagnosing and working with for months. We hope to fill in some of the gaps for you on Sunday.
See you then.
Let me just add my thanks to Ray and the Policy Board for giving us something solid to mull over instead of relying merely on secondhand reports. I'm sure I'm not alone in being grateful for the information.
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