Don Bickford's Comments at the 2-6-2011 Budget Meeting

Don Bickford gave me permission to post the comments he made at the Riverside Budget Meeting on Feb. 6, 2011. They were as follows:


I applaud the

progress made in the Finance Office in the past year.

initiative of Budget and Planning to clarify and document the donated funds in our portfolio.

public commitment of lay leadership to honor donor intent.

And I am confident of the sincere good intentions of all who have brought the process to this point.


However, I will vote NAY with respect to the resolution now under discussion.

I will state my reasons and if you agree, I hope you will also cast a NAY vote.

This resolution authorizes taking from the portfolio nearly $300,00 more than the amount that the longstanding spending rule would permit.

This fact is not made clear to the congregation in the budget documents you have been given; nor was it explicitly explained at the forums held in the fall.

Combining the three separate resolutions into one and failing to provide the spending rule calculation sheet as had been our practice for more than 20 years has further clouded the situation.

The proposed budget claims to have sustainability as its goal; regrettably, this budget continues Riverside’s longstanding habit of spending beyond its means and is most definitely not sustainable.

The materials provided and presented have inappropriately combined operational and capital spending to assert progress towards the sustainability goal. It is in the nature of capital spending to fluctuate from year to year and what is important is the long term average. The previous Church Council concurred with recommendations from Budget and Planning to treat $4 million as that average capital amount; That 2011 happens to be a lower than average year for capital spending ought not to be deemed progress.

This budget eliminates or reduces certain positions and programs important to the membership; while this is necessary, insufficient educational efforts to win over support from the effected constituencies has taken place. A major part of that failure of responsibility falls with senior staff, a group which has offered no reduction in its own compensation as part of a sharing the pain strategy.

For all these reasons I will vote NAY and hope you join me.