It may be a small thing but yesterday and today the fire hydrant out front was moved and passed inspection by the city. The water was off briefly at the school while we learned what valve did what. (Oops.) The city of Boynton Beach is a normal part of the process and their engineer gave us a set of drawings of the underground water pipes. This contained an amazing amount of important location information. We now have almost as much on paper as Harry McDaniel has in his head…
By the time you read this we will have signed or be about to sign the contract with our General Contractor Rick Mouw Associates for the narthex project. Real start date will be the first full week of January. Our contractors will be doing their best to give us as much access as possible but while parking will be a challenge for a while, our parking ministry will be on hand to ease the pain. The whole circle area in front will have to be completely blocked for 3 or 4 weeks. We’ll also be using the transepts for entering and leaving. The shell and interior construction will take a few months but we have been promised it will be done by Easter.
If you caught the bulletin last week or the Carpenter has shown up in your mailbox, you may recall that we noted how we are all experiencing difficult economic times. (We probably weren’t the first place you heard it.) The vestry is taking a pragmatic approach to the management of the church’s treasure. The plan calls for building only as much as we can reasonably afford with the funds the congregation is able to provide. While most building projects are done using bridge loans (very short term loans designed to even out the highs and lows) St. Joseph’s doesn’t have a mortgage (long term loan) on any of its property. We are in better shape than most churches in our diocese. That’s a good thing and the vestry wants to stick with pay-as-you-go, especially now.
To that end we have asked our architects to divide the narthex and parish hall building into 3 phases that will let us more easily match our building project expenditures to our financial capabilities. It is certain to take longer to complete but it would be foolish to just charge ahead before we know where the money will come from. This approach will add some extra cost overall but makes good sense in light of the times.
This also means that we will have to live with the current parish hall for longer than we originally thought. We’ll need to consider how to make what we have last a little longer and work a little better for us. We'll need to look at issues such as where to find more storage, should we paint, replace some flooring and even some of our kitchen cabinets and more.
Prayer and Patience and all will become clear…
We welcome comments and value everyone’s input.
God's Peace, Ric Filer
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