We've experienced some "growing pains" at Cicero UMC, most recently evidenced by the challenge of finding a suitable place for our High School Sunday School class to meet.  Our church leadership has been working over the past several years to discern the best way forward as we continue to grow.

    First of all, we have committed to church growth.  We want to make visitors welcome and have them feel that there is room for them as a member of our church family and that there is also physical room for them.

    We have looked at several broad concepts for growth;  1. Expand our present facility, 2. Leave our present location and build a new and larger facility and 3. Sponsor the creation of another church or satellite church in our area.  The decision was that at this time, we should expand our present facility.

   The third step was to determine how to expand our present facility.  We considered; 1. Purchase the Conference Center which is attached to our building, 2. Rent a temporary modular building and place it next to our building and 3. Build an addition to our building.  The decision was to purchase the Conference Center, if possible.

   A facilities team was formed to work with the Conference Trustees to agree on how we will accomplish the purchase of the Conference Center.  The work of this group is guided by the covenant agreement which was established at the time the Conference Center was built.   An appraiser was hired to determine the market value of the building considering that the building has no land.  The value was determined to be $400,000.

    Following an initial meeting with the Conference Trustees, the Administrative Council voted to send the Conference Trustees a formal letter requesting that the 18 month notification period as specified by the covenant begin November 1, 2007.  A second letter was sent to the Conference Trustees proposing that the Conference make some significant amount of space available to the Church during the next 18 months and that the Church extend the effective date of the transfer of the building for an additional 18 months.  This additional time could be very significant for the Conference in light of the proposed merger of the 4 New York State annual conferences in 2010.

    A second meeting with the Conference Trustees was held on November 17.  We agreed to establish a 6-person task force to develop one or more alternatives for making additional space available for the church.  A second task force was set up to prepare a proposal covering the financial aspects of the property transfer.  Both task forces will be led by our District Superintendent, David Underwood.  This is a complex negotiation, we expect the task forces to have some recommendations in January or February.

    As soon as we have reached an agreement and we have committed to this course of action, we will want to begin the process of raising funds.

Stay tuned for further developments.

 Lee Mount, Chair, Facilities Committee