Parish Administrator’s Notes
By Phil Grant, Administrator and Safe Environment Coordinator
pgrant@st-matts.org or 651-224-9793
September 14, 2025
So Many Leaks
Phil Grant, Pastoral Administrator and Safe Environment Coordinator
My training as a school principal 25 years ago included this approach to prioritizing among the many tasks facing any administrator: Priority A – Critical. Take care of these first. For example, the roof is leaking. Priority B – Important. Discuss relative importance, work on as many as you can after dealing with Priority A items. Priority C – Would be nice. It’s hard to get to many of these, since there’s never enough time and money. Good advice. I’ve used these decision-making guidelines many times over the years. Which brings us to our situation at St. Matt’s, where roof leaks are all too common. That is, we’ve had a critical item on our plate since before I arrived in 2021. We have made progress. We replaced the school’s flat roof and the two low roofs on the Parish Center in 2023. Those leaks have ended, as far as we can tell. In 2024, we made progress with the church roof. After years of our complaining, the company finally realized that someone cut corners in 2019. Their team “completed the contract” for the church roof. That’s good, because a next step with the church roof is to replace the skylights. Ours are original (1970) and have occasionally leaked.
We recently confirmed that one of the leaks in the school building is from the stage roof. That was also replaced in 2019, by the same company that did the church roof. The company is sending a crew to complete that stage roof work. (It involves making sure the flashing is wrapped properly.) Meanwhile, as part of the recent school leak investigation, we discovered that another leak in the school gym stems from windows that need caulking. Good to know. Now we can address that problem. The third leak remains groundwater incursion into the northwest corner of the school building. That’s a more complicated project. It awaits additional engineering analysis.
Thank you for your support, and have a great week!
Parish Administrator’s Note, September 7, 2025
