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Brrrrrr!
Shock at increased heating bill
leaves some parishes cold
Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published January 6, 2006
DETROIT — The surprise that came in the mail for St. Cecilia parish, school and activity center wasn't exactly tidings of joy.
Administrators were surprised – and then worried – when they received a heating bill last month for $10,000. They were able to scrape together most of the funds, partly through the generosity of parish members, but Fr. Theodore K. Parker, pastor, isn't looking forward to the rest of the cold winter months.
With the cost of gas rising, St. Cecilia is by no means alone in this challenge, as churches all over the region make appeals and adjustments to try to keep their heating bills under control.
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St. Cecilia's large and tall worship space was one reason the most recent heating bill for the church, school and activity center was $10,000. | St. Cecilia was able to pull together $3,000 from both the church and the school funds, $987 from a special collection when Fr. Parker appealed to the congregation. He's expecting some insurance money from a claim when a church van was stolen earlier this year, and will likely use that to pay the difference of last month's bill and some of this month's bill.
"The people are just wonderful and generous, even when it hurts them," he said. "I'm thankful that people responded as much as they did."
He said last year's bill for this time of year was about half what it was this year. He's hoping the bill that comes this month will be a bit lower, as it will reflect when the school was closed for a week and a half over Christmas break.
The church, completed in December of 1930, is 228 feet by 46 feet with ceilings that Fr. Parker estimated at 80 feet high. Since it was built during the depression, it doesn't have a basement, and even the windows in the rectory are single-pane and inefficient. The school, church and activity center, which had been the original church, are heated through one heating source, attached to the school. Fr. Parker estimated that system to be about 70 years old and with its own set of problems.
He plans on having a special envelope for heating costs available to the congregation every week during winter. However, he knows families and other churches are having the same problem.
"All the churches in the Archdiocese are experiencing this," he said. "We're all making adjustments."
Michael Gorman, the Archdiocese of Detroit's finance and administration director, said he'd only heard from St. Cecilia as far as expensive energy bills as of before Christmas. He estimated rising heating costs would account for a 30-percent jump in churches' bills, which would likely hurt a lot of budgets, he said.
The archdiocese doesn't have the funds to help parishes with their heating bills, he said, adding that they're advising churches to turn down their thermostats a few degrees.
St. Charles Borromeo in Detroit has a basement, which could be a luxury this time of year considering that it costs less money to keep a basement at a livable temperature than the church itself. Pastor Fr. David Preuss, OFM Cap., said the church has 50-foot ceilings and therefore a lot of cubic space to heat – about $300 worth a day.
For the past few years, the congregation has moved into the church basement during the colder winter months to keep energy costs down, but this is the first year since 1919 the church held Christmas services in the basement. That year, the upstairs church wasn't complete.
The majority of the parishioners at St. Charles Borromeo have lower incomes, Fr. Preuss said, and are seeing heating increases on the home front, too. "They're dealing with their own gas bills," he said.
And when money does come in, Fr. Preuss said, he would rather use it for things such as outreach ministry to the neighborhood.
St. Charles Borromeo has taken some steps to become more energy-efficient, too, Fr. Preuss said. They've installed a solar-power heating unit, and use energy-saving light bulbs. "We will spend money to invest in the kinds of things that will have a payback," he said.
At St. Cecilia, Fr. Parker said he tries not to be extravagant with the heat, although he knows he can't freeze people out of church. For example, the church won't get heat except for Mass, although it takes several hours of heat blowing for the church to warm up.
The staff is investigating how much it would cost to install a new, more efficient heating system, but the church also needs rewiring to handle more electrical demand and some other repairs.
Fr. Mark Borkowski has also turned down the thermostat at Sweetest Heart of Mary, the biggest church in the archdiocese as far as square feet, he said. The temperature in church is kept at 50 degrees when it's not in use, and bumped up to 65 degrees for Masses.
In the rectory, the temperature is kept at 64 degrees, and staff members adjust by wearing sweaters and bringing in portable heaters as "the rest of us walk from radiator to radiator," Fr. Borkowski, pastor, said.
Sweetest Heart of Mary's bill for most of November was about $6,000, more than staff had budgeted. However, this year, he's expecting to be OK on heating costs after a parishioner who died left some money to the church.
The church also spent about $1,000 on a new, state-of-the-art thermostat, Fr. Borkowski said, which is designed to save the church thousands in heating costs.
He put the news of the cost of the heating bill on the front page of the bulletin after the bill arrived. The parishioners' generosity has gotten the church through before, he said, and he's expecting it to help the church through again next year if costs continue to be high.
"The people are so generous," he said.
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