St. Helen Catholic Church PAC Discussion

The PAC will be a multi-use building with numerous users utilizing various components of the building. The day to day operation of the center will service, at various times, virtually everyone involved in our parish community.

Our parish, along with the entire Georgetown area, has experienced substantial population growth and city leaders predict the area will continue to grow for the next several decades. A study has shown that the population of the area will triple in the next 25 years. We are severely limited for space to meet our current parish community requirements and will need larger facilities in the future to meet our increasing demand for space to enable and enhance our parish services to our parishioners.

I’m afraid that the church will over-extend itself and we won’t be able to reasonably make the payments. What happens then?

Click here for the financial analysis spreadsheet for these numbers.

We understand your concerns and in these uncertain economic times, it may be difficult to understand why we chose to build a $4,000,000 building (including furnishings) at this time. We believe there are several significant reasons to proceed at this point:
First, we have a strong financial case. The attached model was the basis of the Finance Council’s decision that we have the resources to proceed. We’ve simplified the overall package dramatically but we recognize there’s a lot of detail involved and many aren’t interested in these details. Some of you are very interested. If you’re not, skip the model explanation and go to the next section; if you’re interested, here the data. We’re printing a summary of the actual model used for our decision but with explanations to explain the model’s operations to those of you who have an interest in this level of detail.
At the top left portion of the model you’ll see the number $665,283.17. This is the total cash left in all church accounts after writing a check for $200,000 to the PAC called “Church Participation:” We originally planned on a total amount of $524,145.89 on our initial proposal to the diocese when we applied for the loan to build the PAC. We’re about $140,000 stronger than we expected to be when our loan was approved.

As you continue to read down the left side, you see the building cost, the furnishing side (F/F/&E – Furnishing, Fixtures and Equipment) and the cost of our campaign consultants. We will spend approximately $4,100,000 to build, furnish and collect for this building.