I wish to thank all of you who took the time to complete and return the Campus Connection Survey. We are now reviewing the survey responses in an effort to formulate a plan of action to be implemented this fall. Here is a summary of some key survey results.

394 families (24%) of our 1,600 registered parish families and / school family households returned a survey response regarding the construction of a Parish Life Center, the “Campus
Connection,” at St. Mary’s. Please note that not all of the families answered every question on the survey.

The responses were favorable in almost every category of the survey:

• 82% (or 316 of 387 families) have been registered parishioners for more than 10 years.
• 47% (or 180 of 381 families) are involved in one or more parish ministries.
• 90% (or 345 of 386 families) consider St. Mary’s Parish Community to be a special place.
• 69% (or 263 of 382 families) believe that St. Mary’s Parish Community needs to complete some type of construction and renovation project to meet the needs of the Church and School.
• 86% (or 332 of 385 families) contribute to the parish through the envelope system or
• contribute on-line.
• 70% (or 241 of the 347 families) indicated they would make a financial commitment to a
• construction and renovation project.
• 59% (or 263 of 382 families) were in favor of the Capital Campaign to begin in the fall of 2015.
• 61% (or 205 of 335 families) indicated that they believe that St. Mary’s Parish Community can be successful with this campaign, while 71 (21%) had no opinion.
• 18% (only 59 respondents) felt the campaign would not be successful.

We also received several written comments, all of them thoughtful, which raised the following issues: (1) concerns about the cost of the project and our ability to fund it; (2) concerns about parking accessibility to the church and school; (3) concerns about the need for a stand-alone gym and the future of St. Mary’s School; (4) concerns that a handicap accessible ramp in the front of the church might not be attractive. There was, however, strong support for handicap accessibility. Finally, there were comments of this sort: (a) that the project does too much for the school and not enough for the parish, (b) that the project does too much for the parish and not enough for the school.

I greatly appreciated these frank and honest comments, although some of them, especially the last one, seem to misunderstand that the purpose of the recommended option is to do something that will be mutually beneficial to the parish and school. I believe the recommended option accomplishes this (although not to everybody’s complete satisfaction) by providing facilities and improvements that will respond to the genuine needs of our parish and school.

At the present time, we need to study the results further and determine if we have the financial resources to go forward with recommended option, or if should scale down the project. I intend to give you a fuller report in September.

Father Matera