Margert in the News

Margert's Founding Parishes Officially Merge
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Financial Concerns Cause Diocese to Merge Churches in Queens, Brooklyn

By Brendan Brosh
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Sunday, September 7th 2008, 3:28 AM

Parishioners in some Queens churches are going to notice some changes Sunday.

The Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens has merged six churches into three parishes around the borough to save resources and money. Two Brooklyn churches have also been combined.

The mergers, which took effect Sept. 1, are the fourth wave of reconfigurations by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio since early last year.

Individual churches will remain open, but the number of Masses is likely to be cut.

"We really connected with the folks in each of the parishes and explained the reason why the mergers are necessary," said the Rev. Kieran Harrington, vicar of communications for the diocese. "People's lives won't be disrupted because the houses of worship are still open."

Religious education and senior programs will be mostly unchanged, but officials will combine church bulletins and cut office expenses.

Running an urban diocese, with many working-class and new immigrant families, is a challenge, Harrington said. He also stressed the mergers were needed because of a declining number of priests.

"People understand the reality because of the shortage of vocations," said the Rev. Jim Cunningham, who now leads the St. Mary Star of the Sea/St. Gertrude parish in Far Rockaway.

St. Gertrude lost its full-time pastor in July 2007, when the popular Rev. Brendan Downing died of cancer. Cunningham has led both churches since then.

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City's Criteria for Prospective Homebuyers a Huge Success
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HEY, FEDS, HERE'S THE WAY TO DO IT: MAYOR

By David Seifman, New York Post City Hall Bureau Chief
Posted: 3:51 am
September 24, 2008

Perhaps Mayor Bloomberg should be named the nation's chief mortgage officer.

With once-mighty financial institutions around the United States reeling from the subprime-mortgage crisis, the mayor announced yesterday that only five of the 17,109 mortgages granted under the city's $7.5 billion affordable-housing program are in foreclosure.

"It is quite an amazing number," observed Bloomberg. "We have done this right, and an awful lot of people in the private sector and mortgage business have not."

By any measure, the default rate cited by the mayor is enviable: one in 3,422 homes.

After the mayor spoke in the Morrisania section of The Bronx to commemorate the halfway point in his 165,000-unit building program, officials said unlike banks and other lenders who had been shoveling out high-risk mortgages, the city has maintained very strict criteria for its prospective homeowners.

"We've been very conservative," said Bloomberg, explaining that buyers couldn't devote more than 30 percent of family income to their monthly mortgage payments.

"If you can't afford that, you're not going to get the mortgage."

The city also established other checks.

Only fixed-rate mortgages were acceptable, so there were none of the dramatic swings that are a fixture of adjustable-rate loans.

Downpayments of 10 percent were generally required, and every prospective buyer had to take a course in home ownership.

david.seifman@nypost.com

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Higher Banking Fees Expected
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Newsday.com: Banks expected to raise fees after mergers

By Patricia Kitchen
October 1, 2008

If your bank is buying the competition or selling out to them, you may want to add the words "higher" and "fees" to your banking vocabulary.

Financial institutions will likely "use this as an opportunity to raise everybody's fees," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director in the Washington, D.C., office of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the federation of state public interest research groups. "This wave of mergers will result in bigger banks, and all our studies have shown that bigger banks have bigger fees."

While such fees can range from charges for replacing a lost ATM card to returning your paper checks, one big one to watch out for, said experts, is fees levied against your account when you bounce a check or when the bank covers overdrafts - purchases, withdrawals or payments you make with not enough money in your account to cover them.

Consumers pay at least $17.5 billion a year in such overdraft fees, said Jean Ann Fox, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, which is "big money" and the amount of those fees has been "steadily increasing." The average high is $37.50, up 15 percent from 2005, according to a federation survey of overdraft fees and practices.

What she said consumers should also know:

Banks don't warn you as you're making a withdrawal or debit card purchase that doing so may trigger an overdraft.

Of the 10 large banks in the survey, six had no cap on the number of overdraft fees they would charge a customer in any given day.

If you don't get money into your account fast enough to cover the overdraft, as well as the fee, you can get slapped with further fees.

Especially vulnerable are "cash-strapped consumers, struggling to keep up and keep enough money in their checking accounts," said Fox. But banks are allowed to charge new fees or increase existing ones, she said, as long as they let consumers know, even if it's in very small print.

Also, don't be fooled if you see your bank bending over backward to lure in new deposits.

"They may start giving away free toasters to get depositors, but beware. They'll get you on the back end," namely in fees, said Russ Haven, legislative counsel in Albany for the New York Public Interest Research Group a nonprofit, nonpartisan student-directed research and advocacy group.

Twelve years ago he said he was aware of about 250 bank fees, a number he said "has only gone north" since then.

Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.

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Governor Calls Special Legislative Session to Cut Budget
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Governor Calls for $2 Billion More in Cuts;
Special Legislative Session Scheduled for November 18

Governor David A. Paterson has just called for a November 18 special session of the Legislature to close a potential $1.2 billion current-year budget shortfall related to the recent turmoil on Wall Street. The Governor reportedly will be seeking $2 billion worth of cuts for the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2009, because of his fears that the state’s taxpayers will continue to decline.

Governor Paterson additionally announced he would deliver his 2009-10 Executive Budget on December 16, 2008, which is more than one month earlier than the January 20, 2009 constitutional deadline. This accelerated budget process will give the state a head start on closing its substantial future budget gaps and help ensure that a balanced budget is enacted well before April 1, while still providing appropriate time for public and legislative input.

“Since the day I took office, I have expressed consistent concerns about the fiscal challenges we face, but the impact of the unprecedented events that have occurred in the economy in recent weeks are worse than anyone imagined,” Governor Paterson said. “While we have significantly reduced state spending over the past six months, I am calling for another special session because it is clear that we have no other option but to make further difficult choices to ensure a balanced budget in this time of extraordinary financial and economic turmoil.”

The announcement follows a public meeting in New York City of the leaders of the state Legislature, attended by Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, and Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco. The meeting was also attended by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

At the request of Governor Paterson, the Division of the Budget (DOB) today delivered a preliminary report on the impact that the recent turmoil on Wall Street will have on the current-year state budget. The report found significant declines in revenues from business taxes and even greater declines in these and income tax revenues during the fourth quarter of the fiscal year. For a copy of the report, click here.

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