FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

ADMINISTRATION MINISTRY TEAM

14 October 2008

 Present:  Dina Schroeder (Moderator), Carl Connor, Winnie Quinzi, Darla Topley,

    Mike Bartholomew

 Absent:  Mary Kammann (Excused)

 Carl opened the meeting with prayer.

The Minutes of the September meeting were reviewed and approved as written and submitted.

 OLD BUSINESS:  1)  The Stewardship Committee has started the 2009 campaign with the first of 4 each “Minute for Stewardship” presentations to the congregation at the start of regular church services.  Darla will be the presenter for the 4^th and final “Minute for Stewardship” presentation.

 NEW BUSINESS:  1)  Church Credit Card.  Our current Church credit card is issued by Elan Financial Services and requires the Pastor, or some other Authorized Church Official to sign a legally binding application that acknowledges that he, or she, will be personally liable for all debts incurred by all card users in case the Church does not pay those debts.  While this is not a problem for the Church, it does place the Pastor or whoever signs the application agreement in a position where their personal financial obligations could be impacted by the monthly debt that the Church incurs in the normal course of our business.  Carl Connor has been tasked with looking into getting a Credit Card from our Bank that would not require any individual to be placed in a position of personally guaranteeing our credit card account.

 2)  We discussed the status of our commitments to improve the accuracy and timeliness of our monthly financial reports to all of the various Session Committees and the Deacons.  We are continuing to work towards achieving this goal and recognize that all Committee Moderators will need accurate financial data in order to develop their budgets for 2009.

 3)  We reviewed the following Building Use Applications and acted upon them as shown below:

A)  The request from Family Worship & Praise Center to use Watkins/Reeves Hall for their Christmas Party for about 150 persons on 12 December from 6 to 10 PM was approved via email after our September meeting once additional information was provided to the committee.

B)  The request from Donna Boyle to use Watkins/Reeves hall for the wedding reception of her youngest daughter on 30 May 2009 was approved via email after our September meeting once additional information was provided to the committee.

C)  The email request from the Kairos Prison Ministry to use Reeves Hall on Saturday Mornings was approved without any additional fee because it is part of our congregational outreach mission efforts.

D)  We approved the request of the Order of the Arrow to use our facilities on 1-03-2009 for their ceremonies because there is no scheduling conflict and our Boy Scout Troop 62 will be involved.  They will be charged the applicable janitorial fee.

E)  We approved the request of the New Horizons Band to use our facilities on 6-08-2009 for their dinner because there is no scheduling conflict and member Beverly Briggs is their sponsor.  They will be charged the applicable janitorial fee.

 4)  Policy and Procedures Manual revisions.  We continued our review of the Policy and Procedures manual by reaffirming our decision to exclude all part-time employees from any sick time and holiday pay benefits.  We continued our review by addressing the Pay Practice paragraphs, which will be changed to reflect our current practice of distributing paychecks on the 15^th of the month instead of the 14^th as currently written.  We also discussed adding a sentence to the paragraph that addresses employee salary reviews, to ensure that these reviews occur after the annual budget is approved by the congregation.  We discussed our currently written Vacation and Paid Holiday paragraphs and agreed that they are overly generous.  We propose to reduce the amount of Vacation time that full-time employees can earn and the number of paid holidays granted to our employees from the 13 that are listed in the manual to the 9 that are more appropriate for churches and private industry.

 5)  Our Payroll Clerk, Debbie Roberts, is currently providing us Payroll and Bill paying support from 2 PM to 5 Pm on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.  She is also working hard to provide the various committee and Session Financial Reports as accurately and timely as possible.  We are also blessed to have David Yaryan working as an office volunteer to consolidate and standardize the Power Church financial donation tracking and reporting software on the 3 office computers.  We are continuing to look for a part-time Admin Assistant / Bookkeeper with demonstrated Quick Books accounting program expertise.

 6)  We provided the back-up financial data for the salary and benefit package of a Youth Specialist to Pastor Story and the Christian Education Moderator so that they could put together an employment package and make a verbal offer to Mark Hellman after his visit to our church.

 7)  We plan to provide budget worksheets to all of the committee moderators by email before their November Committee meeting so that they can start developing their committee budgets for 2009.

 8)  Dina will be providing our incoming Moderator, Mary Kammann with the end-of-the- year personnel review forms so that she can start, and become familiar with the process.  Our plan is to complete that process by the end of November.

 9)  The ordering of pledge envelopes is started and will be finalized after our November committee meeting.  This timeframe is comparable with that of last year.

 Dina adjourned the meeting with prayer.

 Next meeting:  11 November at 7:00 PM

 

Session Meeting:  21 October at 7:00 PM

 

Respectfully submitted by Carl Connor

 

Phase I Debt:  Congregational Members:  $110.000.00

 

Session Action Items:  NONE