Parish Project Updates

Friends

Peace be with you. 

Some of you may have noticed that we are making some repairs around St. Patrick’s. I’m not sure there is ever a perfect time to update you about these and I dont’ have the space to be exhaustive but I hope to update you about some of them in this bulletin column. First, you may have noticed the presence of several Brecke Mechanic vans outside the parish center for the past several weeks. The heating and cooling system in the parish center was out of date and beginning to no longer function. It was great technology when this building was built but the combination of years of use and outmoded technology meant we needed to update things. The expected total cost of this is around $70,000, depending on how much “new” material they have to put in and how much they can reuse. 

We are also working to put a washer and dryer in the maintenance office. This will be useful to Tony to clean mop heads and rags and, possibly, the kitchen people to clean towels.  In that same office, we realized that the main hot water heater for the kitchen and janitor’s closet hasn’t been working for some time, possibly even several years. I anticipate that the cumulative bill for both of these will be under $1000 per job. 

Hopefully, starting soon you’ll see some work being done to make a parking lot on the corner of First Ave and Ellis Blvd. (The city is changing 6th St. to Ellis Blvd, by the way). At about the same time, a separate company will be tearing down the white house on the corner of Fifth St. and A Ave. My hope is that these two projects will coincide close enough that some of the fill removed from the parking lot area will be able to be used to fill in the hole created by tearing down the house. The house removal is expected to be around $70,000 and the creation of the parking lot will be around $350,000. 

In the near future, we will be working on replacing the roof of the parish office building. It was damaged in the derecho and was further damaged on that Friday evening during lent when we had high winds. On the one hand, this is a project that is time sensitive, as all the roofers I’ve talked to tell me it’s just a question of time before we have holes in the roof and leaking and damage. However, I’ve been exploring the possibility of putting solar panels on that roof, which, if we could do it, could supply 110% of our power needs, the maximum allowed by the federal government. We could also get compensated by the government for 30% of the cost of the part of a new roof that would be under the solar panels. But this will likely involve a small capital campaign along with the parking lot. 

There are some other smaller projects that I’ll try to highlight in the coming weeks to make sure that you’re kept in the loop as much as possible. I want to thank the volunteers and staff who have been spearheading the efforts to get these done. I feel like great things are happening at St. Patrick’s and some necessary repairs and upgrades will make this place even better!