Parish Maintenance Update
Your parish finance council has been working hard behind the scenes to help our parish flourish. We have worked hard to retire all of our debt. We paid off $2,332,212 to build Xavier Center on 7/20/17. The intersection upgrade at the corner of Table Rock Road and Boyd’s School House Road, which was required by Cumberland Township to maintain our license of occupancy for Xavier Center, cost us $268,925 and was paid off on 11/14/19. Our school debt of $126,637 was also retired on 11/14/19. With your generous support and the help of a donor who paid off the remaining balance of the intersection and school debt we were able to retire our debt. We burned our mortgage in March 2020. Since that time, and throughout Covid, we have been able to remain debt free. Praise God.
We then turned our attention to saving money to put towards maintenance and renovations of our properties that includes the Historic Church, Xavier Center, office, rectory and cemetery. And yes Xavier Center needs maintenance because although it is our “new” facility it is already ten years old.
Unfortunately, Covid-19 threw a monkey wrench into our plans. Thank God we were able to continue worshiping throughout the past two years plus. But, it did put a large dent into our finances. Everyone tightened their belts and we are coming out leaner and stronger.
As we have gotten ourselves on a better footing we are again turning our attention back to maintenance and renovations of our properties. Two of our parishioners with expertise in property maintenance have gone over our properties with a fine tooth comb and have put together estimates of the continuing costs to maintain our properties. These estimates are very comprehensive covering everything from light bulbs to HVAC systems and everything in between. They estimate that we need $82,239 per year to maintain Xavier Center and $37,634 per year to maintain our Historic Church. These estimates are per year over the next fifty years. We have already begun some work on our properties. This includes emergency light replacement at Xavier Center, dead tree removal and tar/chipping roads at our cemetery, asbestos and mold removal at our office, improving air quality in our Historic Church along with roof and bell tower repair at our Historic Church, repair work on the gutters and down spouts at our Historic Church and caulking sidewalk gaps at Xavier Center and our Historic Church to name just a few. This is in addition to the routine maintenance of these properties.
As always, your finance council works very hard to make the best use of your generous contributions. Currently, we have about $100,000 in the Historic Church Preservation Fund. We are formulating plans to continue to upgrade our Historic Church.
Once again, we want to thank you for your past support of our projects through both the red “Historic Church Preservation” and “School Support” envelopes. We look forward to improving and maintaining our properties with your continued support.
On an unrelated note, the parish was approached by the Diocese and TC Energy-Columbia Gas Transmission regarding the instillation of a natural gas metering station near the southwest corner on Table Rock Road. The pipeline will be located above ground on a tract of land originally conveyed to the Columbia Gas Transmission Corporation via a right of way easement agreed to by the property’s then owner, Mr. Ralph Bowling, on January 14, 1982. The station will be used very infrequently for the purpose of launching electronic devices designed to assess the structural integrity of other existing transmission lines. It will be completely surrounded by a slatted fence and landscaping that will help with the aesthetics and visual impact of the station. The installation is expected to take place over the summer when school is not in session and will not interfere with Masses and other events taking place at Xavier Center or our parish office. For our trouble, the parish is receiving $25,000, an amount deemed fair by the diocesan real estate evaluations, as well as another $4,000 for two months of time that is expected for installation of the metering station.
God Bless,
Harry Holt, Business Manager
Ed Szoke, Finance Counsel Chair