Trying to make sense of the fiscal crisis...

We could hardly miss the fact that church leaders have been growing increasingly worried about the financial condition of our beloved church. The pleas for cash have been so constant that they sort of blurred into the background, easily ignored by most.
I suppose we all knew that unless money mysteriously poured into the treasury, something ugly was bound to happen. Now we have a glimmer at least of what that is: the erasure of all youth choirs, the bell choir and a slashing of the adult choir as well.
No doubt there are more cuts that haven't filtered out yet. They will.
But what is all about, really? That's a bit more foggy for most of us.
I grabbed a copy of the February 11 Policy Board minutes to try to make sense of what's happening. It only helped a little.
In that report, Patty Lee, our executive director, said that as of December, the church's income was down $92,365 over last year, due to our decision to switch to a fiscal year that starts in January.
But, the minutes go on to say, "Next month's reports will show a surplus as all of the prepaid pledge income received in 2007 for 2008 ($93,110) will be posted in January as 2008 income. Total expenses year to date are just bout on target with the budget. The balance of the loan from the endowment to operating ($28,458) was paid off at the end of December."
That only helps a bit. It appears from that that spending this year is on track with what the budget anticipated. That's always good.
What isn't clear is whether revenues are also on track, but given the barrage of pleas, I figure they must be falling well short.
Anyway, the other interesting thing in the minutes is a brief mention of a discussion about the associate minister. My understanding is that the Policy Board is determined to hire a second full-time minister to replace Jean (not that she can ever be replaced, of course!). Jean has worked part-time, in theory anyway. The minutes say that "John Weston, UUA needs to know ASAP about locating a candidate, but certainly no later than April 1." Presumably, Weston is helping us find that second minister. Weston is the ministerial settlement director for the national UU organization.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that we're moving ahead with making the second minister's job full-time rather than continuing the part-time slot that Jean has held while simultaneously moving to slice out a large chunk of what our church does for its youth. Or, to look at it another way, we're wiping out most of the music program to pay additional salary to a second minister.
That makes so little sense to me that I keep thinking I must be looking at it wrong. But I think that's how it is, though if I'm mistaken -- and I often am -- I hope the Policy Board will make it clear soon exactly what's happening.
What I am sure about is that we need a solid, understandable explanation of this crisis soon so that we can all have an intelligent discussion about what's going on.
I hope the meeting at 10 a.m. on Sunday is recorded and put on the church website so that everyone can listen to it, even if they can't attend. This is vitally important stuff to our future.

Update on April 2, 6:30 p.m. --The church's financial advisor, Peter Begin, explained to me in an email about the volatility of the church's finances. Here's what he had to say, which is clearly important:
"I wanted to clarify one thing that you brought up that is confusing and, frankly, runs the risk of distracting us from the broader, more important issues - the impact of changing the fiscal year. When our fiscal year ran from June 1st to May 31st, all the money collected in December was recorded as income in December. Most of our "big givers" make their full contribution in December for tax reasons. Now that we follow the calendar year for our fiscal year, this huge slug of money collected in December is for the NEXT fiscal year and can not be recorded as income in the year it is received. So, if you looked at our income statement for the 7 months from 6/1/07 - 12/31/07 (the transition period for the switch to the new year), you would see a huge loss. At the Policy Board meeting we explained that this loss is a little misleading because in January we record this slug of tax-motivated giving as income for 2008 and, voila, we're back in the black.
"HOWEVER, this too, doesn't tell the whole story because we'll end up running losses for most of the upcoming months and, eventually go in a deficit position again. This will cause us to have to borrow to meet payroll. It's a long way of saying that we have significant volatility within the year. WE NEED TO STAY FOCUSED ON THE FULL YEAR PICTURE."