The 213th Annual Council - Diocese of Virginia

Proceedings
updated pledges, changes in the asking for The Virginia Episcopalian approved by the
Executive Board and revised estimates of restricted income. We then made adjustments
to the expense line items to assure we had a balanced budget. We needed to make about
$70,000 worth of cuts to the various line items in the budget, but increases in income,
in the income line estimates, reduced us to about $66,000. Recall that the need for the
adjustment was due to the fact that the proposed budget approved by the Executive
Board in December did not include the $70,000 in interest expenses in the expense totals.
We considered not only the requests for each line item, but also the ability to access other
funds, and funds available from other sources and funds remaining from prior year
operations for those line items. As I stated earlier, we also considered your pleas and
comments from the hearing last night.
Next I will highlight the adjustments we made, but first I would like to introduce the
members of the Budget Committee. I ask the Committee members to please take one step
forward as I call your name: Bill Fetsch, Daniel Robayo, Don O’Connell, Doug Geddes,
John Baker, Kirk Gibson, Roy Barksdale and Anna Lou Flynn. And those who could not
be present due to illness or other commitments: Don Cady, Carol Burroughs and Laura
Inscoe. And I would be remiss not to thank very much the staff members of this Diocese
for their tremendous help and support during this process.
Now let us look at the budget as proposed by the Committee. I would remind you
that the detailed explanation of each line item is available online in a document we
call the narrative budget. That should answer many questions about what each line
item represents. Mike [Kerr] also provided some additional explanations in his report
yesterday and at the hearing last night.
Please turn to the budget document as distributed this morning that is on your table. If
you do not have those documents, please raise your hand and diocesan staff members or
a PYM member will try to bring you additional copies.
The income side of the budget is based on parish pledges and other items shown. Based
on pledges received to date, we made an adjustment downward for income line A from
the December proposal. This is offset by an upward adjustment in line C for increased
asking for The Virginia Episcopalian. We also adjusted expected income for restricted
funds, and that’s in line E, and that adjustment is up. This gives us an estimated total
income for 2008 for $4,794,764.
Now, for the expenses. While I will not walk you through all line items of the budget, I
will summarize the changes we made to specific categories to achieve a balanced budget.
In fact, we adjusted more than 30 individual line items to achieve this balanced budget.
In category A, that remains the same because that is based on a formula, and based on
last year’s plotted income. Category B, ecumenical partnerships, yes, we had to cut some
items, trying to be sensitive to the needs of all areas of the budget, trying to share the
pain equitably. I’ll remind you that our giving through budget is but a part of a larger
budget for the many ministries we support. The total adjustment here was $5,100, or
about 5 percent. Category C, support for youth and young adult ministry, was adjusted
by $7,490, or a little less than 3 percent of the original proposal. Category D, missions and
church planting, was adjusted downward by $7,000, or about 1 percent of the Executive
Board proposal. Category E, programs and committees, was adjusted downward by
$4,750 or about 6 percent. Category F, canonical ministries and bishop’s commissions, was
adjusted downward by $20,681. Most of this adjustment was in line 10, Commission on
Professional Standards, whose role has been assumed by the Committee on Continuing
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The Diocese of Virginia t Journal of the the 213 th Annual Council