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Note #8116 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Meeting expenses
04076
February 12, 2004

Meeting expenses

Up-and-down per-capita will be subject of up-or-down vote at GA

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE - Commissioners to this year's Presbyterian Church (USA) General
Assembly, the last to be held before a scheduled shift to every-other-year
Assemblies, will decide how to spread out the costs of biennial meetings.

	The choice: whether to make the annual per-capita apportionment
higher in Assembly years and lower in off-years, or to keep the rate
essentially the same every year while deferring some Assembly-related
expenditures from off-years to Assembly years.

	About $2 million is budgeted from per capita - a variable per-member
assessment used to pay Assembly-related and other ecclesiastical expenses -
for a typical General Assembly meeting.

	The per-capita rate for 2004 is $5.51 per member.

	The first proposal from the Committee on the Office of the General
Assembly (COGA) and the General Assembly Council (GAC) would set a rate of
$5.46 for 2005, a non-Assembly year, and $5.56 for 2006, when the Assembly
will meet in Birmingham, AL.

	Another option is to approve a rate of $5.51 - no change from this
year's rate - for both years, while deferring almost a million 2005 dollars
to pay for 2006 expenses.

	COGA and GAC voted during a joint meeting here on Feb. 10 to
recommend per-capita budgets of $12.4 million for 2005 and $15 million for
2006. (The 2004 budget is $14.8 million.)

	The budgets are based on an assumption that the PC(USA) will continue
to lose about 45,000 members per year through 2006.

	The Rev. Gradye Parsons, OGA's director of strategic operations,
reported that uncollected per capita totaled $188,000 in 2002 - the lowest
figure in 10 years.

	Therefore, despite continuing threats from disaffected Presbyterians
to withhold their per-capita payments, the "uncollectible" budget lines for
2005 and 2006 were reduced to $350,000 per year for 2005 and 2006, down from
$425,000 in the 2004 budget.

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