| Commission looks at needs,
funding
By Michael Wacht
LAKELAND — A group of lay and clergy leaders
from across the Florida Conference began meeting last month to look at
the conference’s capital needs and ways the conference can fund
those needs.
The team is called the Conference Capital
Commission and was approved at the Dare to Share Jesus 2001 Florida
Annual Conference Event May 29-June 1 in Lakeland.
The Conference Council on Finance and
Administration (CF&A) recommended that Bishop Timothy Whitaker and
the conference lay leader, T. Terrell Sessums, appoint a commission to
“engage in a comprehensive study of all capital needs…and their
financing.” The commission will report to CF&A at its February
2002 meeting and work with the conference board of trustees to prepare
a recommendation for the 2002 annual conference event.
The Rev. Debbie McLeod said capital needs
usually refers to new buildings, building improvements or land, but
the bishop challenged the commission “to think beyond brick and
mortar to other needs of the annual conference that are not met.”
McLeod is a pastor at Christ Church United Methodist in Fort
Lauderdale and one of the 17 commission members.
At its Aug. 31 meeting the commission drafted a
preliminary list of the conference’s needs, which included
additional property at the Leesburg camp complex and the conference
Heritage Center. Among the unmet needs are the unfunded retiree health
insurance benefits, seminary scholarships and an endowment for renewal
and revitalization of congregations in Florida, McLeod said.
The commission also looked at some of the
capital initiatives the annual conference approved during the past
four years. A report of the projects was compiled by the Rev. Dr.
Keith Ewing, the bishop’s administrative assistant, and included
renovations to the United Methodist Building in Lakeland, fund raising
for and construction of an Archives and History Building, purchasing a
sewage system for the Leesburg complex, holding a capital funds
campaign and building the Bishop Cornelius L. and Dorothye Henderson
Secondary School in Mozambique.
McLeod said the commission also discussed that
three of eight priorities in the three-year Claim the Flame campaign
were not funded because the conference did not raise the needed $6.4
million. They included additional meeting rooms and child-care
facilities at the Life Enrichment Center, a conference-wide
maintenance and replacement fund to address emergency needs, and
provision of a print shop building, archives building and an apartment
for resident custodial and security personnel in Lakeland.
The commission identified five initial needs,
according to McLeod, “but those are not necessarily the ones we’re
going to recommend to the annual conference.” The commission wants
to “take a comprehensive look” at the conference’s capital needs
and “get input from all related groups,” she said.
Whitaker sent a letter Sept. 6 to conference
leaders asking them to submit requests related to capital needs, which
he said could include “the establishment of an endowment, as well as
the construction…or the improvement of a building.” The letter
includes a survey form that is available on the conference Web site at
Conference Capital Commission Survey.
McLeod said the commission is starting from “ground
zero” to build the capital needs list and wants the conference’s
boards and agencies to “submit everything” related to their
capital needs, even if it has already been submitted to the annual
conference.
All survey forms should be returned to the
episcopal office by Oct. 31 so they can be considered at the
commission’s Nov. 2 meeting. |
