Introduction

     First, I have to deal with this word “blog.”  Its definition is not in any dictionary I use regularly, but in research with the technocrats in the family, the term comes from WEBLOG - a place where people wrote random thoughts about the web sites they were building.  It shortened to “blog” and here I am writing one.  I prefer this to twitter or chirp or tweet or stumbleupon.  As I write along, I hope I get comments or questions from those of you for whom this is new information, or those who remember along with me.

     The Financial Advisor reports annually to the General Assembly and is accountable only to that body, but the work takes place in countless meetings in the Board Room at 25 Beacon Street, with dedicated people who share my commitment to this extraordinary denomination.

     Denominational involvement started for me like a blind date that matured into a full-fledged love affair.  It was 1962 and the Rev. Arnold F. Westwood, our minister in The Unitarian Church in Westport, discovered I was going to be in Washington, DC. visiting my in-laws during General Assembly time.  He insisted I go as a delegate, possibly Westport’s first delegate, and when Arnold pressed, one never resisted.  I soon realized a General Assembly  was more compelling than spending time with my in-laws.  It was the first year after Merger, and I saw and listened in awe.  I had no idea of the action which lay ahead for me.

     I continued attending GAs, year after year, and when the children were old enough to leave, Carolyn attended with me.  The New York GA in 1974 was our first together, and by then, I was chairing the Board of Trustees in Westport for the second time.  Going to GA became part of our early summer routine - - we had become GA junkies!    We were frequently asked by our own congregants what was so compelling about GAs, and our minister, the Rev. Edwin A. Lane, suggested I explain it at a Sunday Morning Service, and somehow, it came out in poetry.

     “I meet a lot of people from day to day
     Who are hard to talk to --
     But I never meet them at General Assemblies.
     We come from many different places and perspectives.
     But we have a great deal in common,
     We know each other well,
     Before we even meet.
     We take up from there
     As if we were old friends,
     Apart since last year.
    
     The importance of the General Assembly
     Lies not only in what happens on the floor at the plenaries –
     It is in the sense of interconnectedness
     Revealed and reinforced,
     The exchange of energy and of good feeling,
     The stimulation of the religious, the ethical,
     And the intellectual, within.
     We know we are not a religious persuasion of great numbers
     And so it is especially important for us to gather
     And touch each other’s lives.”

And so it began...

     During my tenure as chair in Westport, I also served on the Metro New York District Board as its first male secretary.  (There is no truth to the fact that I was elected just to keep me busy taking minutes, lest I voice too many opinions!)

     After a lot of encouragement and organization from friends like Sandy Caron, Mary Hart, Jerry and Denny Davidoff, the Rev. Dwight Brown, and the Rev. Jack Mendelsohn, a weight of some substantial proportion fell on me at the 1981 GA in Philadelphia when I was elected Financial Advisor.  Like many experiences in our lives, this one cannot adequately be anticipated on reputation or warning, but must be grappled with directly to be understood.  And so it began…

     I found the position of Financial Advisor itself in good health.  Rumor had it that my predecessor, Bob Adelman, was occasionally thought to be controversial in his more public moments.  Let there be no confusion however, about the fact that this association was fiscally more healthy for his having served as Financial Advisor.  There was on the Board of Trustees, an attitude of responsibility in dealing with financial matters – not a lack of differing opinions about priorities in the allocation of available funds – but a willingness to make difficult decisions, an atmosphere in which no one questions that the budget will be honestly balanced, an acceptance of conservative methods of crediting income from our endowment funds for current budgetary purposes, a recognition that the needs of an uncertain future have a place in our thinking as well as those of a seemingly finite present.

     In a sense, Bob Adelman had created this important denominational responsibility in a form in which it didn’t quite exist before.  I knew I would not discharge it in quite the same way as he, but it was a responsibility in which I was at once proud and humble to serve.

     When I was a wee lad, my knowledge of finance was largely limited to that small territory to the right of the decimal point.  Money, in my early life, was almost entirely a matter of the present.  Later I learned that it can have a past as well as a future – as it does for us in the Denomination.

     I readily understood that our treasure was ourselves and what we stood for.  It was not our endowment or our annual cash giving, although they nourished and gave strength to our religious body, and without that nourishment we should surely approach ineffectiveness or die.

Leading up to my first GA as Financial Advisor

     The good health of the Financial Advisor’s position manifests itself in clear delineation of the tasks to be done, and, most important, a Board educated to those tasks. I found the Board members knew what I was supposed to do: they were quick to remind me if I didn’t seem to be doing it and they were prepared to listen to my recommendations on financial matters. They were reasonably loving about my occupational needs to be in the minority, sometimes by myself, and to be the perpetual semi-professional pessimist, looking on the dark side of things for those risks, those fiscal exposures which would eat away at our institutional strength.

     I had heard a lot and wondered some about the conflict which certain UUs perceived between the Financial Advisor as critic and consultant on fiscal and related matters, and the same person as UUA Trustee. I believed the Financial Advisor had to be a full-fledged working member of the Board, participating fully in its deliberative and decision making process, and must be bound and accountable in recorded votes, as well as responsible in the legal sense as a fiduciary for the Association, as are all other Trustees. When I voted, I could not escape the bias my financial and legal
background gave me any more than could the other Trustees escape from their personal and professional backgrounds as educators, ministers, business people, social scientists, etc. Only once can I recall an instance in which I voted on a matter from under my Financial Advisor’s hat, knowing I would have voted the other way elected as a district or at-large Trustee. I hoped to be able to deal with this concern in a responsible fashion; I knew I could count on others to tell me if they believed I was not.

     My first report to the General Assembly was made in Brunswick, Maine, in 1982. The year had been one rich with new experiences and new “issues.” (We no longer used the word “problem, ” perhaps because problems can be solved but issues are ongoing and can be discussed forever!) I couldn’t fail to notice how many people left the plenary hall when my report started: note to self, not everybody loves finances the way you do.

     I began with a summary of the operating results, in which I reported that in the 1980-81 fiscal year, our Association remained within the framework of the balanced budget previously adopted, and the Annual Fund surpassed its objective. It was expected that the same accomplishments would characterize the 1981-82 year. However, I felt it necessary to commend to the General Assembly’s attention the sharp rate of increase in our budget levels over the last five years which indicated a budget increasing from $2.7 million to $4.0 million through 1983-84. It was time to look at how we were funding these increases.