Present
Fr Tom Egan, Gerard Barden, Ray Landi, Patrick Bolger, Sean Carroll, Greg Howard, Melanie Gibbons, Felicity Brown, Libby Biberian, Kevin Keenan, Liam O’Hanlon (KSC - Guest)
Apologies
John Donnelly, Fr Vincent Malone, Eduardo Albert, Brian Hunt, John Wilson
Minutes of Last Meeting
Minutes of the meeting of 16 January 2012 were amended to note that Sean Carroll was in attendance and that apologies were received from Libby Biberian. Signed off as being correct by the Chair.
Finance
The finance committee met on 27th February. The main points arising from that meeting were:
· The 15 February deadline for submission of the accounts to the diocese was met.
· The accounts show a credit of £261,968 at 31/12/11
· An envelope will be produced for mass stipends to claim gift aid relief.
· Several projects that will require funding were discussed i.e.
o New boiler – the existing boiler is old and unreliable and needs to be replaced ideally ahead of the winter.
o New cisterns are required in the hall toilets
o Following a number of break-ins and attempted break-ins additional security cameras are required – possibly one in the hall entrance and one in the church.
Quotes will be obtained from the Diocese office for each of these projects.
Offertory income is holding up well and as there is no urgent need to raise funds, there will be no planned giving appeal at the moment. The parish does however need to cover weekly running costs of circa £4.5K. This will however be discussed at the next Finance meeting with a view to planning fundraising for 2013 by the end of this year.
The Finance Committee will be meeting 23 April 2012 in the small hall.
Website/IT
Gerard has set up a parish Twitter account and has issued a test tweet. Twitter name is #OLoLN11. Gerard will also look into setting up a Flickr account.
Prayer/Evangelisation
Training has started for volunteer altar servers but more volunteers are still required.
Lenten talks have been going well and have been well received. Exposition is taking place every fortnight.
Planning is underway for holy week services.
Ecumenism
‘Churches Together’ Stations of The Cross are being organised by St John the Apostle Church in Whetstone and will take place on Wednesday 28 March. Fr Tom has agreed that Felicity will speak at all masses on 24 March to publicise this service.
Parish Hall
Gerard will help Ray when needed to install diffusers in the hall.
AOB
· Recruitment drive:
Sunday 20 May has been nominated and billed as ‘Parish Open Day – An Opportunity to Serve’. This can be publicised on the website and in the newsletter. Gerard to contact the Parish Office to obtain contact details for the various groups. Set up Sat evening and publicise at all Sunday masses.
· Sports Day
The council previously discussed the possibility of staging a parish sports day, possibly at Walker cricket ground. An alternative suggestion was made to combine the sports day with the annual Parish BBQ (July) and hold it at the church/school with the BBQ in the parish yard, outdoor sports events in the school playground.
Fr Tom suggested a committee be formed to organise this and Gerard will speak to Joe Sutton and John Donnelly.
The Knights of St. Columbus have also discussed an indoor Olympics (and indoor sports (darts, pool etc.) in the parish hall which could also be incorporated.
· Bereavement Counsellors
Several parishioners have indicated that they would like to speak with bereavement counsellors and meetings are being arranged.
The next meeting will take place on Monday 21 May at 8.15 pm.