Sunday, January 2, 2011

from the desk of Fr. Paul…

Well over a year ago, we formed a Building and Maintenance Committee. There were twenty four people at the meeting and it was very encouraging. While many of you have always been available to see that areas of the Parish are well maintained and regular maintenance is being done, we have not had a meeting of this committee as such. I believe that we must start meeting because some major decisions have to be made soon. The building is nearing the 20 year mark and many items are showing their age. For example, one of the air conditioners in the Conference Room is broken. The company that maintains our air conditioners said it could be fixed, but it will be expensive and we would be wasting our money because it is so old and inefficient. They will have to break into the wall. If we break into the wall, we might just as well replace it. The other air-con in that room is not working well either.

The Diocese hired the Trane Co., to do an assessment on energy use in all the Parishes in the Diocese. They assessed our building over a month ago. While I haven’t received their report yet, I am told that, for the size of our building and of the Parish, we are spending more money on energy than any other Parish on Oahu. It doesn’t surprise me as I cringe every time our power and water bills come in. They offer suggestions to us on how to be more energy efficient. Off the record, I asked the man who did the assessment what we could do about our water bills. Since the biggest culprit of our high bills is the toilets, he thought it would be wise to replace them all with more commercial type toilets.

Meanwhile, our New Building Committee is meeting to not only plan for the new building, but also on how to renovate this building. While I don’t want to interfere with future plans, there are certain things that must be tackled now. Hopefully our Building and Maintenance Committee can meet soon so that we can begin dealing with the present problems. I don’t want to make these decisions on my own.

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