Pastoral Council Minutes 

November 05, 2007

Attending: Rose Braun, Tate Cooper, Kevin Kohls, Brian Krause, Tom Kroger, Debbie Meinhardt, Cindy Muron, Ann Perry, Ray Sousa, Barb Utrata, Fr. Mark Burger, Kathy Mack, Mary Ann Lampe (Scribe).

Preliminaries: The Council Meeting opened with the Pastoral Council prayer at 7:00 pm. The reflection was led by Tate Cooper.

Agenda Items:

1) Approval of minutes from Oct. meeting – all The minutes were approved as written.

2) Pastoral Associate – Kathy Mack

a) Overview of Activities and Current Topics Kathy passed handouts outlining her duties. With the pastor she is in charge of hiring, firing, the budget,maintenance of the grounds. She is involved with the temporal affairs of the parish. She, also, is in charge of emergency aide (parish St. Vincent de Paul). We made another $30,000 payment on the debt in September, but are still paying $80,000/year in interest. We would like to see this go away as soon as possible. Bingo is down and the festival netted $160,000. Pre-sales and lower expenses helped keep up the net. October Count was 2169, demonstrating that about one-third of total number of parishioners come to Mass regularly. October counts were down in fourteen of fifteen parishes Kathy polled. Sunday contributions were down $10,500 and we, therefore, will need to put something in the newsletter to increase them. About 100 people do Electronic Funds Transfers for which the interest charge is minimal. We’re thinking about taking credit cards, which we have delayed doing because the charges are three to five percent. The new Catholic Ministry (archbishop’s fund) is encouraging us to take credit cards and if we do that we will expand it to Sunday collections. We have about 640 families out of 2400 that give regularly.

b) Issues/Needs/Challenges Motivating people to attend church thus increasing contributions.

c) Feedback Rose – we discussed in the past that perhaps a representative from Pastoral Council attend Finance Council Meetings. Brian Krause has financial experience and volunteered to be this representative. Debbie suggested that someone from Staff sit in on festival committee meetings. Kathy will ask Karen to do this as liaison between office and festival committee. Kathy comes to at least two of the meetings, which start the end of January. Brian asked about the budget process. Kathy starts early in Spring with the Pastoral Team (dept. heads). They are asked to project their budget for the remainder of the year. Once the budget is put together, she goes over it with Fr. Mark and he reviews it. Then Kathy presents it to the Finance Committee with all thirteen staff members present to address any questions that may arise. She always presents a balanced budget which is either approved or returned to dept. heads for refinement. Brian – do second collections rob from regular collections? Kathy – no. Rose – is EFT available for debt reduction? Kathy – yes, just contact the office. What can Pastoral Council do to assist you? Kathy – talk up debt reduction and EFT.

3) Council Retreat Planning – all Our next Pastoral Council Meeting is scheduled for the first night of our Advent Retreat. It was suggested and agreed upon that we attend the Retreat instead of the Pastoral Council meeting and substitute attendance at all three nights of the Advent Retreat for our regular Pastoral Council Retreat. Therefore, every-thing scheduled for December’s meeting will be done in January.

Rose – The cluster meeting is now called The Meeting of Four Regional Pastoral Councils. The next meeting is at St. Michael’s and they requested that people from all departments attend. At the last meeting it was suggested that new members be contacted after two years.

4) Fr. Marks’s Comments Fr. Mark’s term is up this year. There is a review process which includes Father discussing with the parish leadership their desires concerning his renewing his term. A letter needs to be sent to the Priests’ Personnel Board expressing Pastoral Council’s wishes.

5) Adjournment and Closing Prayer of Thanksgiving – Cindy Muron We adjourned at 8:00 pm with a prayer of thanksgiving lead by Cindy.

Next Meeting: Monday, January 7, 2008 at 7:00 pm. in Undercroft D

- Reflection by Debbie Meinhardt

- Prayer of Thanksgiving by Ann Perry

- Pastoral staff guests – Fr. Linh and Michael Dailey