PARISH COUNCIL MEETING NOTES

November 13, 2003

 

CALL TO ORDER: Fr. Santen opened the meeting at 7:35 with a prayer.

 

ATTENDANCE:  Father Santen, Patrick Belding, Barb Potter, Jeff Bunten, David Bytnar, Patrick O’Driscoll, Don Torretta, Bob Nickel, Dianne Muccigrosso, Jane Ott and Lori Padberg.

 

NEW MEMBERS:  Prior to the official meeting, the executive board and Fr. Santen reviewed the applications for new membership.  The applications were then shared with the other Council members.  The applications belonged to Ed Austin, Paul Griessemer and Catherine Mack.  A few more people may still turn in applications.  The new members will be chosen by lottery and invited to the December meeting.

 

FACILITIES PLANNING:  Shari Heitmann compiled the data from the Town Hall meeting.  We reviewed the data and took each of the main ideas from the meeting and put them into one of three categories - Worship, Education/formation and Social/recreation.  In addition, we pulled out what we thought were the "long-range" (major effort/expense) vs. "short-range: (inexpensive or programmatic) topics.

 

Worship Long Range

Transition Space Parking Lot/Church, i.e. redesign area around the Church proper

Larger Adoration Chapel

Expand Church

 

Worship Short Range

Stations of the Cross

Baptism during Mass

Get shades for Church

More statues in Church

 

Social Long Range

Playground

New multi-purpose center (added fields)

 

Social Short Range

Parish Potlucks

 

Education/formation Long Range

Expansion of school; library, labs, music etc.

Adult Spiritual Growth Program

Toddler/Preschool Program

Bringing together PSR and full-time school

 

 

Education/formation Short Range

Families with mixed religions

Hosting Catholic speakers at Parish

Training alter boys and girls

Better awareness/involvement/cross pollination of ministries

Service Projects

Youth Ministry

 

For “homework”, we were each assigned a category.  We were then asked to come up with our opinion of the top five short-range topics from that category.  We were encouraged to also look at the bullet items within the long-range categories to see if some items may be pulled out as short-range action items.  As an example, the bullet item "Big Chairs" within the long-range worship category of "Transition Space Parking Lot/Church" is obviously something that we could do right now. 

 

Fr. Santen is going to see that the data is added to the website.  In addition to the raw data, there will also be a response form that parishioners may use for additional comments.  A bulletin article will let people know about the data and response form.  Hard copies of the response form will also be available in the parish office.

 

The January leadership meeting will focus on these findings as well.  Each attendee to that meeting will receive a packet of information prior to the meeting.  One of items within the packet will be a hard copy of the Town Hall meeting data. 

 

IMPORTANT DATES (MILESTONES) IN THIS PROCESS

November 21       Posting of the “Open Space” results on the parish website and providing a response form for the bulletin

 

December 8          Deadline for responses from parishioners

 

December 11        Parish Council meeting to discuss, collate, and prioritize the results of the “Open Space” gathering

 

January 8              finalize the data for the “Leadership Day on January 24

 

January 12            Mail out materials for Leadership Day

 

January 24            Leadership Day—present the report as part of the agenda

 

March 1?              Town Hall meeting #2—Report to the parish

                                    Outline next steps

                                    Introduce committee

 

CLOSING           The meeting closed at 8:58 with a prayer by Father Santen.