MERCYhouse Summit - Friday, June 24, 2011
Minute Notes

Quick Look at the Agenda:
1)Accept last year’s finance report.
2)This year’s budget for 2011-2012.
3)Vote on the salary breakdown for Pastor Robert Krumrey.
4)Financial Chart 2010-2011 (download as PDF)

MEETING NOTES IN FULL

Martin Burry is chair.

7:00pm – Martin Burry calls the meeting to order.

Agenda:

1. 1)Accept last year’s finance report.

7:05 -- Steve Mirigian reports.

Summary: This is the best financial year we’ve ever had. We are no longer in the red, but we just break even. We’ve paid Robert and our staff every month. This is a very positive change in moving toward being a mature church.

7:10 – open for questions

Tom Van Winkle: What is the interest rate on the mortgage?

Steve: I don’t know.

Robert: It will soon be reduced.

Steve: It was a one-time reset at five years.

7:17 – Martin opens the floor for a motion.

Mike Bosco motions to accept 2010 – 2011 expenditure report.

Dan O’Shea seconds.

The ayes have it; the motion has carried.

1. 2)This year’s budget for 2011-2012.

7:17 – Report from Steve Mirigian.

7:21 -- Tamari: What’s the fiscal year?

Steve: It’s from July through June.

Summary: Big changes are mostly to staff.  We voted to create 2 intern positions, so they have a stipend for $200 each per month per intern, which is $400 total per month. A 2^nd major change is that Robert has asked for and we agreed to a $500 per month raise. We don’t pay the whole thing anyway; I’m proposing that MERCYhouse pay $2,000 a month, which is up from $1,500/month from last year. The plan is to incrementally increase the amount we pay each year. A similar thing for Lois: we guarantee her $1,000 per month and she fundraises an additional $2,000 per month, and I’m proposing we increase that this year to $1,100 per month. The last thing is the budget item for donations: we set aside 5% of what we take in and put it in a special account to give away; however, we did not allocate that last year. This year we’ll up that to 6% which isn’t a lot. And I’ll actually allocate them this year. This year we will send $50/month to Aaron Fears, working at UMass in Athletes in Action; this money used to go to Travis Schultz, who is no longer in missions abroad. One thing that happened this year was that people who raise money for missions trips will now be able to apply for scholarships. We need $3,991.06 each week from internal offering to make this budget work, which is a stretch.

Worth noting: Health insurance allowance went up by 20% this year. Same thing for building heat.

Since we don’t always get up to the mark of the proposed budget, there are always things we can’t do. But this is a worthwhile goal to shoot for.

7:30pm – Cindy: What was the average weekly offering last year?

Steve: $2,711.23 and that includes checks that are mailed in from outside of MERCYhouse.

Cindy: So to make up the difference, we need to increase our offering by $700 per week.

Steve: I also added $1,200 for software for the year. This is largely in part to the efforts that Matt Miscioli is working on with the alumni network to use online services [like auto bill pay] to pay donations to MERCYhouse.

7:34 – The Chair will recognize a motion.

Dan O’Shea motions to discuss.

Ian Russell seconds.

Dan O: The direct cost vs. proposed…these numbers aren’t all the same, why?

Steve: For example, we get rent from the parish. That’s the difference.

7:36 – Chair will entertain a motion to accept the proposed budget for 2011-2012.

Motion…

2^nd…

The ayes have it, motion is carried.

1. 3)7:37 – Last is to vote on the salary breakdown for Pastor Robert Krumrey.

Report by Steve Mirigian. We are simply voting to allow Robert to break down his salary in the way proposed here. We have already voted to give him this amount of money.

7:39 – Chair opens up to questions.

Valerie Cooley: is the health care number ok? $300 per month seems really low for a family of five if $1200/month is the actual insurance. I suppose that doesn’t cover dental or eye.

Melanie Krumrey: It doesn’t cover it.

Tom Van Winkle: So you have to buy your own policies?

Robert Krumrey: When we looked into other policies, the prices were the same or worse. It’s just expensive.

Val: Even with the exchange, there are no better deals?

RK: It’s sliding scale; from what I can tell we didn’t really apply, we weren’t eligible.

Val: You’re supposed to be able to access this exchange that helps you qualify for other coverage at a group rate, since it’s mandated now.

Tom Van Winkle: Sometimes these add-ons are very inexpensive. Your budget is tight, and some health incident could really hurt. It could be worth investigating.

Steve: If we have something concrete later on, we can move to amend the budget. We can only do that once a year.

Valerie: We could have another meeting to increase this in the budget? If we can’t get a better policy, that’s the other option, right?

RK: The other question is are you increasing what we have to fundraise or what the church can give us? We can sometimes do reimbursables if there’s money in the account we haven’t used that month.

Steve: The $500 is what we have as a church to give. We can up the limit, but RK will have to fundraise it.

Valerie: Is this the balance that the Krumreys want?

RK: I think as is for now, and we can look into these things another time.

Katie Russell: Would we need to wait until the next summit if we wanted to amend the budget?

Steve: We’d need a quorum to call another meeting, but we can do that.

Ian: What is the threshold to hold a quorum?

Steve: About this many.

7:48 – Chair entertains a motion.

Dan O’Shea: Motion to accept the pastor’s salary break down.

Cindy Pollsen seconds the motion.

Ayes have it, the motion is carried.

7:49 – Steve motions to adjourn.

Ian seconds the motion.

The ayes have it, the meeting is adjourned.