December 08, 2023 – Pastor’s Note

Difficult Financial Report
The work of a PAA (the Archdiocesan term for a Parish Business Manager) is complex, and training a new one is a very steep learning curve. So as we transitioned PAAs this year, we deprioritized certain tasks to make more time for that learning curve. Long story short, I finally met this week with the Finance Council to set our FY24 budget.

Unfortunately, that budget shows a projected $62,000 deficit. There are two major reasons for this.

1. Stagnant Revenue – Our Ordinary Income (i.e. Sunday collection) was $1.062M in FY22, $1.070M in FY23, and we are exactly on track for $1.070M in FY24. Meaning that, in a period of 13% inflation (July 2021 – October 2023), our income has only increased 0.7%.

• Increased Labor Costs – With such high inflation recently, it would have been criminal not to give our staff at least cost-of-living raises. In addition, we felt the need to hire a part-time bookkeeper (a position we got rid of at the beginning of COVID, since we had fewer things going on, so we could make it work). Together, these account for a $42,000 increase in our salary line item. Add a $20,000 increase in lay benefits this year, and we have reached our deficit. I do not think we could have realistically made a different decision. If our Ordinary Income had increased at half the rate of inflation, these would have been covered.

Unfortunately, there is no escaping the fact that our primary issue is stagnant giving. Over the course of my 4.5 years here, I have cut every expense I can find, and our programs are running on extremely lean budgets. We are at the end of possible cuts, without actually cutting core values (e.g. not giving school scholarships to Catholic families), or finding 40 – 80 hours of additional volunteer labor so that we can rely on a smaller staff.

Neither of these seem as realistic as asking our parishioners to increase their giving by 5 – 10% this year (meaning, if you give $50/week, increasing that to $55/week). So if you are not already giving on a percentage basis (which helps donations keep up with inflation), please start. And if you are already on a percentage basis, would you consider increasing your percentage by 0.25 – 0.5%?