Diocese plan on hold

The Diocese of Rockville Centre has recently decided to delay part of its money-saving plan, saying that it will wait for the effects of its Voluntary Separation program to become evident before moving forward with the Shared Services part of the plan.

Faced with significant financial troubles, the diocese decided late last year to implement a two-part spending-reduction plan, the first part of which entailed offering buyout packages to employees to encourage them to retire early. The second part was the consolidation of administrative services that used to be spread among all parishes into the central diocesan headquarters.

According to Sean Dolan, diocesan spokesman, the diocese has already completed the buyout portion of the plan, with about 560 employees opting to take the package.

"It's hard to characterize it as being something we expected or not because we've never done this before, and other dioceses haven't done this before," Dolan said. "So you can't draw a parallel between a program like this and one in the private sector, because people work for the Church for different reasons — in a lot of cases they don't work for the Church to make a lot of money. They do it more out of a sense of mission. So when you offer someone a financially based package, you're just not going to get the same results you would on the corporate side.

“"I think it's wise for the diocese to move in a more measured approach than we originally were planning to do," said Dolan. "We don't want to do too much and not have the results we're trying to achieve."

The decision to table the second part of the plan comes as the diocese's financial advisor, Charles Trunz III — the man who devised the plan -— has announced that he is leaving. "We're very grateful to the insight and the financial processes and strategic vision that Charles has brought to the diocese," Dolan said. "He was brought here to do specific things — namely, to put those processes and procedures in place, the financial reporting procedures — and he did that. And we're grateful for his service. We have the building blocks in place, and now we can move forward with it."

Comments about this story? ACostello@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.