Over the next three weeks we will continue publishing a series of updates from Fr Joe. The full and complete update can be found in a printed booklet and available in the gathering space of the church or here.
In our last update, we looked at the future projects we will need to tackle in our Church and why we aren’t starting on them yet. In this one, we will look at the often neglected buildings and grounds things that need to be done, as well as our Beloved School.
I’ve been assigned to more than a few parishes in my time and the one thing that burns every parish eventually is bricks and mortar, as well as roofs. These things tend to be hard to raise money for and most priests don’t seem willing or able to set future generations up for success there.
At my last assignment, we ended up spending in excess of $300,000 doing brick and mortar repairs on a small church because no one had addressed bricks and mortars for over 20 years. The head of the company we got to work on it told me that if Catholic Churches ever learned to spend about $5,000 a year on bricks and mortar, the savings would be realized over time.
When I first got here and saw all the bricks we use, I confess I got nervous: every parish I’ve been to has had big money problems because no one took care of the bricks until they had to.
We had some pros look over our buildings and it turns out it is past time for us to do something here.
In many areas of our buildings and grounds, we are in some trouble and we have to address it. We’ve got professionals looking at these things and helping us come up with a plan and to put those plans into a time frame and that is where we are right now.
The biggest single issue we have on our parish grounds is drainage. This problem is making all sorts of other problems. To put it bluntly, water and salt are chewing away at our sidewalks and bricks and even sending dirt down the drains, only making the problem worse. Why is this happening? Because all the water on the north side of our complex has to go somewhere and right now, that somewhere is behind the Church and through the rectory, the Fr. Bush hall and the stairway between the gym and the office.
A City of Grand Blanc official informed us that according to their records, the stairs were built where they are as a temporary solution because they were built over a convergence of three drainage fields. No matter how much money we pump into those stairs (and we have pumped some money into it!), they will always degrade within a year, as they have the last time we put money into them.
To put it bluntly, what we need is a pretty radical plan that will address that
entire area, solve our drain problems and allow us some sort of easier access from the lower parking lot and parish center to the upper area of Church/gym/office/school.
We have a group of professionals and volunteers who have been noodling this for months and we feel like we are closer everyday to bringing in a company to help us make a prudent plan and present it to you, along with the cost.
This, I hope you can see, is a very high priority for us because of all the damage it is causing. If we don’t fix this, anything we do fix will simply start to erode again because we haven’t solved the problem at the root.
Once we finish the Witness to Hope and Restore the Temple campaigns, we hope to introduce the solution for this as well.
Beyond that, we do have a lot of projects to knock out: roofs, brickwork, etc. have all been neglected for too long and each year we don’t address these, we only make it worse.
We also need to be conscious of a vital part of our ministry to the world: Our School. It costs almost $6,000.00 to educate a child at our school.
The good news is that this is nearly half of what it costs the public schools to educate, but the challenge is that our tuition cost is nowhere near the cost to educate. The diocesan standard for us is to cover 30-35% of the cost to
educate and charge tuition for the rest.
For the past few years, we have been JOYFULLY funding more than 51% of the cost to educate because that’s what the school needs. This is, obviously, a huge sacrifice and one we will offer as long as we can.
At this same time, we can’t continue to function this way and as a result, we have spoken to our parents about raising tuition over the next couple years. We simply have to balance our finances with our principles: we have to be
responsible, we want to make sure we never price people out of a Catholic
education.
We recognize that some public school systems are falling into new theories and ideas that are neither conducive to Christian living nor good for our children. To put it bluntly, in some places, indoctrination into a world view is replacing
education. If this phenomena continues, our schools will become a spiritual oasis for many and we simply have to figure out how to keep education affordable. We have plans we are working on on this front and we will keep you updated. It’s simply another idea we need to be cognizant of.
Thank you for taking all this time to read this, I know it might feel like a lot, it sure does to me, but I am filled with hope. Everything we have presented to our Lord has been taken care of and we will meet these challenges with great hope, joy and fidelity. Our grandchildren will inherit a parish that is healthy, strong and well taken care of.
I bless God that he brought me here, I love being your priest.
Fjk