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Tonight my church trustees had our "public" Zoom meeting at which we voted to reject the contract to build the new deck and to reject the $550,000 mortgage that would have paid for most of the deck (but not all of it, and certainly not all the other repairs our buildings need).
It was hard. One of our Board co-chairs, who grew up in my congregation, cried during the meeting and could hardly speak at times.
But in the end, the deck contract and the mortgage were both voted down unanimously.
When I first visited this church in 1993, one of the things that struck me was the beautiful wooden deck. No stairs! So egalitarian! Everybody could cross the bridge into the church no matter their mobility issues! Coming from a lifetime of climbing church steps, I was in awe.
I never dreamed I'd take tonight's votes. But we have a lot of questions about the low bidder on the contract. (Not going to get into them here.) And the "listening session" (or Q&A) meeting we had on Tuesday night revealed that people have wildly different opinions about what should be done.
Ultimately, that lack of consensus among the people we're supposed to represent turned the tide in my mind. Whenever we've had a meeting to call a settled minister -- and we've done that three times since I signed the membership book in the spring of 1999 -- we've been told that UU ministers generally don't accept the call if the congregational "yes" vote is under 95 percent. I don't think any other vote of ours would reach that high mark, but I also don't feel comfortable pursuing a major capital project if we don't have a decent-sized majority on board with it. And we don't have it.
Where to next? I don't know. Will we end up selling our beautiful but difficult property? Probably.
More some other time.
It was hard. One of our Board co-chairs, who grew up in my congregation, cried during the meeting and could hardly speak at times.
But in the end, the deck contract and the mortgage were both voted down unanimously.
When I first visited this church in 1993, one of the things that struck me was the beautiful wooden deck. No stairs! So egalitarian! Everybody could cross the bridge into the church no matter their mobility issues! Coming from a lifetime of climbing church steps, I was in awe.
I never dreamed I'd take tonight's votes. But we have a lot of questions about the low bidder on the contract. (Not going to get into them here.) And the "listening session" (or Q&A) meeting we had on Tuesday night revealed that people have wildly different opinions about what should be done.
Ultimately, that lack of consensus among the people we're supposed to represent turned the tide in my mind. Whenever we've had a meeting to call a settled minister -- and we've done that three times since I signed the membership book in the spring of 1999 -- we've been told that UU ministers generally don't accept the call if the congregational "yes" vote is under 95 percent. I don't think any other vote of ours would reach that high mark, but I also don't feel comfortable pursuing a major capital project if we don't have a decent-sized majority on board with it. And we don't have it.
Where to next? I don't know. Will we end up selling our beautiful but difficult property? Probably.
More some other time.
