Hello –
Your Vestry, the governing board of St. Paul’s, had its monthly meeting on Tuesday. After nearly two hours of deeply engaged conversation and consideration, we decided to postpone the community conversation about the Hardin Courtyard by a month. It will now be on Sunday, September 25th, not August 21st as previously scheduled.
The reason for the delay is that we realized that there are some basic questions that we still haven’t answered to our satisfaction. I believe we’re 80% there when it comes to answering the questions that you are likely to have about what’s happening with this project and where we’re likely to go from here. We’d like to get to at least 90%.
We have two more Vestry meetings between now and September 25th, and at those two meetings we are likely to come to more of a common understanding of things such as:
• Our exact finances
• The complicated issues of accessibility
• The implications for our parking
• The ways to manage the disruptive construction process
• And so on.
(Vestry meetings are open for you to attend if you would like to come and see how the sausage is made! They will be on Tuesday, August 23rd and Tuesday, September 7th and are currently scheduled to start at 7pm.)
In short, after these two meetings we, your elected Vestry, will be able to answer your questions and receive your ideas and feedback in a much more constructive way when we finally have the community conversation on September 25th.
To be clear, we are making no final decisions until we have at least one open community meeting. We are proceeding as though we have a shared vision of a courtyard that is safe, accessible and beautiful. But this is something we can only do together. We need to listen more to your thoughts and questions. We still have some way to go, and it may involve more cost than originally anticipated to get there. But I believe we have the resources among us to build this great legacy for future generations.
Blessings,
Christopher
p: (415) 456-4842