The Traffic Conundrum - The "All Opinions are Welcome, but Sorry no Instigators" Board

Rational · Status: Offline

The Traffic Conundrum

Lisa Salberg · Status: Offline

You have a good point however you are missing one point - and it is an important one. If the applicant fails to provide information the planning board is permitted to use 'judgerment' to fill in the missing blanks. Therefore as there have been no projections given it is reasonable to use past growth as a map toward future growth - that is "reasonable" and the planning board can use this to draw conclusions from. The failure to provide information will be to our advantage in the end.

The environemental issues have yet to be addressed in there entirety so dont be so quick to judge what will have value - there is a great deal of data yet to come out.

There are a few other gems just waiting to see the light of day as well - if you dig into the data you can find them - they will all come up in good time.

Have a nice night

Rational · Status: Offline

I tend to agree that, without forthright disclosure by the applicant, judgement may be able to be used by the board. The question is whether or not it will survive legal scrutiny in the lawsuit that will follow. I do think that they will need some expert opinion(s) to back up those judgements which will reduce the potential impact that the boards decision will have during the civil lawsuit.

BTW - I give it at least a 50% probability that this entire fiasco has been set up just to provide Ireland with a good excuse to sue the township. I conclude that just because I think that it is really unreasonable to assume that the needed 20,000 congregants are going to be traveling 1 hour each way to attend church. There are more local and much more convenient options available to those folks.

RTDweller · Status: Offline

From Rational

Perhaps we should even hire an expert in Evangelical Church Business Accounting and investment to explore the "reasonable ROI" expectations in that industry for 31 Million dollar expenditures.

answer

$ 1000.00 per year per member is the most widely accepted formula.

5000 people for at 31 million dollar deal is stretching it, unless they have a HUGE amount of cash, endowments, or VERY rich celebrity givers who can handle 7 digit donations for several years.

Without that figure (31 million), one might think 12,000 people is probably the minimum target, 15,000 & above is probably the target

Rational · Status: Offline

RTDweller -

If your assumptions are correct and could "see daylight", then the CC project would be "toast." Without being a traffic engineer, it is crystal clear to the casual observer that GPR would not be able to handle that level of traffic without a major infrastructure investment.

The pregnant question is therefore - - - how do we shine some bright and credible sunlight on this MOST important of all issues? How do we get the papers to cover this issue? All of the other issues raised can be overcome by the applicant, in my opinion either via his political clout and/or position or by ireland throwing money at any of the environmental problems that the town can throw his way.

-- Edited by Rational at 21:45, 2004-11-23

RTDweller · Status: Offline

here are a couple of web links...plenty more out there...

If they are recieving 5 million per year (which is what I heard, not what I know for sure) & have 5000 people, that is pretty consistent with the 1000.00 per person I gave you. Also with the 1400.00 per family stated below by Barna (that would put the # at about 4.2 million based on 3000 families. Using 700.00 per year per person (taking 1998 numbers x 3% inflation) you come up with about 3.5 mill per year.

If the 5 million per year income is accurate & they intend to spend 31 million, they are way short i believe. I'm sure an accountant could tell you how much $$ they would have to take in annually to cover the 31 million. They must include interest payments, and operational costs. Staff pay alone can be 50% of their income. That may sound like alot, but it's not. 1 staff for every 100 people is pretty normal.From what I understand the have 50 staff (which fits the formula for 5000 people) & figuring 50K in salary & bene's per staff = 2.5 mill which would be 1/2 the budget

Personally, I think they need 12,000 minimum...UNLESS some people come in & pledge Millions(5-10) from the start ...But I am not an accountant...Where are people getting this 5 million per year #as their income? ... if on the web, send me the link

I heard it was asked what the growth projections are & none were given (I actually believe he has none)... a better question is how much $$ will be required per year in income to support everything...divide that number by 1000 & you have the number of people needed... you would have to only hope that the huge staff $$$ are included

I know this is far fetched, but ultimately, I think cc will do the right thing... a contrarian opinion for sure

http://www.adherents.com/misc/giving.htmlighlights

Highlights of the Report - 1998
* Per-member giving increased from $367.79 to $569.81 in inflation-adjusted dollars, an increase of 55% from 1968 to 1998

http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=161

The mean amount of money donated to churches and other worship centers in 2003 was $824

In total, one out of every twenty households (5%) tithed their pre-tax income to non-profit organizations. A large majority of those individuals actually gave ten percent or more of their income to churches – a group that represents 4% of the national population of households.

Among the born again population, which represents 38% of all adults, the average giving to churches was $1411 – much higher than a year earlier ($1220), but below previous year’s totals. The amount of gross income donated by born again adults to their church averaged 3.8%.

Rational · Status: Offline

I am not an accountant either, but here are some round numbers. We all understand how mortgages work. In the beginning, the entire mortgage payment is nothing but interest. Also, larger loans command higher interest rates (ie. the Jumbo mortgage, etc.). Now, all construction projects exceed their original estimates by at least 20% due to overruns and extras. That is generally known fact. His building cost will ultimately be about 37 million.

At 5.5% intererst per year, that comes to about 2 Million bucks in interest.

Let's look a little further at costs. This place that I am living in costs $2250.00 in heating oil per year and another $2,000.00 in electricity for (mostly for air conditioning in the summer). That is a total of $4,250.00 per year in energy costs for a 4000 square foot building. This guy wants to build about 400,000 square feet (about the size of St. Peters Basilica in Rome). That is 100 times the square footage of this place. Assuming that cubic feet do not matter (and they do and a lot - - - but we will ignore that fact - - - churches have a lot of cubic feet per square feet by comparison to common residences) then his costs for energy are going to be another $425,000.00 per anum.

Lets provide a payroll of 100 people, just a place to start from which is not unreasonable if they are a 10,000 person congregation. (actually, the use of a little calculus here would be instructive, but we will avoid that for simplicity). At an average of the salaries that you stated of 50 K per year we now have another $5 Million dollars per anum in costs.

The rule of thumb for maintainence and incidentals for a facility is its total cost X 10 percent per year. That adds up to another 3.7 million bucks per anum.

Lets ignore all other expenses for a moment and sum up what we have thus far in the cost column:

Mortgage: 2 Megs

Energy: 0.425 Megs

Payroll: 5 Megs

Maintainence: 3.7 Megs

Total Yearly Costs: 11.125 Megs per year

Dividing that by your number of 1K per member, there is your 11,000 member church. Now, keep in mind that Ireland is not in this to save souls, but to make money. I would guess that he wants another 2 Megs per year for himself, but put whatever number you want on his greed factor and do the math yourself.

The fact is that his congregation expectation is GROSSLY understated by Ireland and the Media. And the impact of this to this town will be enormous because of his poor planning and our unwillingness to confront this most fundamental of issues.

In simple terms, the real polution problem will be number of people comming to this town on Sundays, completely displacing those of us who live here and support RT through our taxes on the day of rest.

Daniel

-- Edited by Rational at 08:49, 2004-11-24

Jay R · Status: Offline

Interesting thoughts RTdweller...

Remember though....the good rev, mister doctor reverand david ireland, p.h.d. has given his flock four ways to adjust their lifestyle to increase his capital gains (see their pamphlet about how they want to touch the wallets of their flock):

Pack a lunch several times a week instead of buying it.
Cancel subscriptions for magazines and newspapers you no longer read.
Buy clothing that can be machine-washed instead of dry-cleaned.
Have a family picnic in the park instead of going out to a restaurant

When you calculate the amount of money needed, remember - he's taking their lunch money too (LOL)!

For those who wanted to meet the rev at 140 GPR this past week but could not. Have faith...As he says on his website "Pastor Ireland and the other pastors are not untouchable. They deeply care for you and your family." I'm SURE he'll be happy to meet with you (as soon as you pay him lot$ of money to join his little church).

Hey everyone - have a safe and happy Thanksgiving....and if you can - find the hidden turkey from one of the photos below:

-- Edited by Jay R at 09:37, 2004-11-24

RTDweller · Status: Offline

Where did someone get the info on how much cc takes in per year? I would like to see it & would prefer not to drive to their offices to find out.

also, I hate to be contrarian again...but when you make statements about Pastors Irelands character & his fiscal responsibility (ie he's in it for the money), you only energize the people of cc (you can assume they monitor this forum)

when you stick to the facts you cause them to think that what they are proposing will negatively affect the lives of people in RT.We all know only a couple of people in RT are for this, but the people of CC do not know this. We all know they are coming to RT in hopes that many of us go to CC.

What they need to know is why RT does not want any organization of this magnitude and that they are actually HURTING the cause of Christianity in RT at this point...

Rational · Status: Offline

RTDweller,

I do not get the impression that Ireland or any of his folks could care less what impact this thing has on RT. Having been at most of the PB meetings, Ireland has made it abundantly clear that the problems that his church will create in this town are none of his own to deal with. These problems are for RT to solve.

As for income, all that we know is that his IMPACT ministies corporation, division of CC produces about 5.5 Megs per year according to Dunn and Bradstreet. However, D&B numbers can be highly unreliable when it comes to privately held corporations because they are not required to open their books to the public. So, usually, D&B must rely on the word of the company CFO.

-- Edited by Rational at 09:40, 2004-11-24

BR · Status: Offline

You all raise very valid points in your financial assesment. I am not an accountant either, but I have developed a business plan or two in my day. One of the most important factors of any business plan, is making reasonable assumptions for the adressable market of your product or service. In this case church members or regular attendies. This would be a requirement for any financial institution that would consider backing this project. Growth projections are a key factor, and I seriously doubt they have not been projected and documented.

Also, there are many other forms of revenue one could generate from a church business that could surpass donations, some that come to mind are:

1. School Tuition

2. Seminars

3. Sale of Books, DVDs and Tapes

4. 800 number donations for his radio and tv infomercials

5. Admission fee's ("donations") to shows and special events

6. Concesions (ie Foodcourt and Cafeteria)

8. Catering for weddings and special events in the banquet hall

9. They could even go so far as to charge for parking

For more info, just cruise around the CC website. Things of particular interest that back up my comments above are:

1. The Impact "store". Books, DVDs and Tapes cost pennies to reproduce and have 10-50X markup.

2. Job Oppenings. They are looking for someone with telemarketing (800 number) management experience. Ireland most likely has plans for another weekly TV show (like he used to have). You would be surprised how many people call these 800 numbers looking for salvation......... only to make a donation.

RTDweller · Status: Offline

Hey BR,

Good points... I'm not sure if you are aware but most media ministry's are supported by the churches that put them on. Not too many stand on their own. Only a handful bring in the kind of $$ CC needs brings in to support the site. Although I respect Pastor Irelands teaching, he is just not that popular at this point. Go to ecfa.org and you will see that there are ministries that are on 100's radio stations that only generate 3-4 million per year, and barely any profit. Impact ministry is no where near that popular at this point.

A school would probably be the biggest revenue generator (with low profit) ... if they get 1000 students, that would probably only add 2-3 million/yr in gross revenue.

It would seem they would need 1) many celebrity givers or one billionaire giver 2) to increase in size/membership 3) develop a huge tv ministry...# 1 may be the case #2 is most likely the case #3 is a real long shot

Have a great Thanksgiving

THINKER · Status: Offline

I really can't see them doing well with the school because of the location. Do you realize what parents will have to go through to take their kids to school during morning rush hour? Since none of them exist in RT they will have to travel. If classes start around 8 they will be hitting the heavy traffic jams on any major highway they have to travel. Hmm, a Traffic Conundrum.