Arrochar Parish Church Congregational Board Report
		The Board of Arrochar Church met on Wednesday 15th. January, 2003 at 7.30 p.m. in the Church hall. Present were Neil, Gill, Retta, Stella, Anna, Eric, Hettie, Bill, Nancy, Marion, May, Karen and Dane with apologies having been received from Janine, Jamie, Tom, Margaret and Jimmy. The minutes of the last meeting, that of 11th. December, 2002 were agreed and the meeting got down to business, most of which was spent looking in detail at the accounts for last year which Karen had already prepared. These were very good news indeed. We have ended the year with all bills paid and with £11,960 in the bank. There are a number of factors which combine to make this quite a remarkable achievement. On the income side, we budgetted an income of £14,600 and actually brought in £18,070. On the total budget we forecast an annual surplus of £9 and ended with an actual surplus of  £6,677. All of this in spite of two remarkable facts - our aid from the Church of Scotland was very substantially cut (in 2002 we received £4,000 from the Church nationally - in 2003 we shall receive £2,000, and thereafter we shall receive nothing at all) and, secondly, we went ahead and financed out of our Church funds the completion of the Church Restoration programme. The work has been completed and all accounts have been paid in full. Naturally this brief report condenses much celebration and thankfulness! The Board then moved on to agreeing a budget for 2003. This budget is printed as a separate item on the reports section of this web-site. The property report indicated what has already been said, that all of the restoration work had been completed and paid for; and that an insurance repair to the Church tower was being undertaken. Thoughts were turning to a planned programme of restoration (something needs to be done about the church hall windows) and this would be discussed both with a future meeting of the Board and with the Community Trust. To have curtains in the Church hall or not? That was the question and the answer is not yet clear as many people had quite strong views on either side! Those in favour pointed to their use to enable the room to be darkened for presentations during daylight hours, to the advantage of closing off distractions (often from noisy kids) in the evenings and for the advantage of homeliness. Those opposed felt that curtains would spoil the look of the hall, would be expensive, would attract dirt and would not be easy to fit because of the design of the windows. It was agreed that we would return to the matter once the windows had been upgraded. Fund raising, both in actuality and planning had gone well; there is to be another boat trip this summer and the Easter Fayre is planned for Saturday 5th. April. The Friends of Arrochar Parish Church now have an income of £160 and it is planned to produce a newsletter and possibly an event for later in the Spring. Under other business it was reported that there had been a communication from Lyn Smillie of Argyll Council. She was anxious to know that the Church hall would be equipped for disabled people by 1st. May in time for the elections. However, the money which the council could offer for the alterations had dropped from fifty per cent of the cost, as previously offered, to a maximum of £500. As the cost of building a ramp around the building, replacing the Church hall door, levelling out the entrance inside the hall was in the region of £800 and as there was no guarantee that even once this work was done that it would comply with legislation to enable proper access to the church for disabled people, the Board felt that it couldn't undertake this work at the present time. We have asked the planning authority to inform us what should be done to comply with legislation regarding access and, given that ours is a listed building, we have asked them to notify us of what they will allow us to do. At present we are awaiting a response from them. The Board is, of course, anxious to ensure that there is access for everyone to the Church and ancillary facilities. There being no further business the meeting ended at 9 p.m.