From Fr. Steve Lacroix, CSC
Every year around this time, I like to share our year-end financial statements for the past fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2021. (I usually wait until the fall to share these numbers with the parish so that our Business Manager and I have time to review them with the Parish Finance Council.)
I’ll be the first to admit that, with the unusual nature of the past year, these statements are hard to compare with previous years. If you recall from past reports, we had been running at a deficit and have been working to shrink that deficit each year. We have been able to do this without dipping into our savings at all because our cash flow has been stable, but we have been moving closer to a balanced budget each year to ensure the long-term financial health of our parish. The events of the past year, however, particularly the COVID pandemic and the sacristy fire, have resulted in unusual and inflated numbers for both income and expenses. Most significantly, we received a Payroll Protection Plan (PPP) loan that proved to be enormously beneficial during the worst of the COVID pandemic, enabling us to continue normal operations without laying off any employees or reducing their hours or wages. (The PPP provided a loan in the Spring of 2020 that subsequently was forgiven in full as part of the federal government’s CARES Act.)
These income accounts also reflect other extraordinary, one-time events, including grants that covered health and safety expenses, grants for technology purchases in the school, and insurance reimbursements related to the sacristy fire. The expense side of the equation also contains a number of extraordinary items, including the health & safety and technology expenses […]