April 29, 2020

Thank You All for participating in the annual Congregational Meeting last Sunday. This community is amazing in its flexibility and willingness to use new skills! We had more than double the needed attendance for a quorum and conducted complex business smoothly.

Special appreciation goes out to the tech team who kept us lined up and moving through the agenda. I also want to particularly recognize all the hard work that Barry Zickuhr did making this event accessible and manageable for all of us. And a final Shout-Out to John Tafejian. His diligence, research, and effort through a truly uphill struggle have realized the funding opportunity under the Payroll Protection Program.

Several of us have been researching the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) program and comparing the benefits for our congregation of that program with the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loan. Our combined best understanding of the funding available through the ERTC is that this would be close to that available from the PPP loan. The calculation of the amount from the ERTC is more complex than that from the PPP. The ERTC program money is potentially available over a longer time period and looks to be a little less in terms of amount.

The second issue with the ERTC program is that eligibility requires either that the organization must have stopped/suspended a significant portion of its services due to governmental order or have experienced a fifty percent reduction in revenue from the same period in 2019. I do not believe that OUUC qualifies on either of these points. We continue to provide the services that we have provided, if not more, and we certainly are not yet experiencing a 50% reduction in funding.

Given all of this, I believe that the PPP remains the best option for additional funds in our present situation.

I signed the documents securing the loan with Key Bank yesterday as directed in the approved motion from our meeting.

Thanks Again and stay safe!

Fritz Wrede, President of the Board