Scheduling Building

"Thus, none shall be exempted from the justice and the laws of God, that all things may be done in order ..." Doctrine and Covenants 107:84 (emphasis added).

The Church, our Stake, and our Wards are great due to many reasons, one of which is that there is order in God's house. As Bro. Anderson has informed me that the 2010 Stake calendar is 99.9% complete and that I can now begin to accept 2010 Resource calendar requests from the Wards for the Stake center, I beg a moment of your time to cover several items:

1. Activities on the Stake calendar do not generate a building reservation on the Resource calendar. If an activity requires a building (or portion of a building), a Resource request must be sent in by the organization that wants to use the facility. While the Stake takes first priority for Resource reservations, Stake organizations are not exempt from submitting a Resource request for their activities. This should be done by each organization as soon as possible, as the Wards are already planning their own activity calendars and need an accurate Resource calendar to select potential dates.

2. Bro. Anderson has been generous enough to enter a number of the main Stake events on the Resource calendar. As your organization goes through the process of submitting Resource requests, please review the Resource calendar to see, first, if there is already a Resource reservation for your event and second, if the details in the reservation are as you need (time, rooms, contact information, etc.). Please send an updated request if needed. The more accurate the information, the smoother the system runs.

3. It is possible that all the details that go into your 2010 Resource request (exact time range, all needed rooms, etc.) may not be finalized at this point. If this is the case, when sending a Resource request, use your best guess to set an approximate time range (including set up and take down time)and the rooms needed. A contact person and their phone number should always be included in a Resource request. A secondary Resource request can be submitted later if the time range and/or rooms need to be updated. This will allow the Wards and other groups to have a good idea of what is available on any given date.

4. Please request only what is needed. There is nothing wrong with scheduling the entire building if need be. However, each building is a valuable asset that often can accommodate multiple users to accomplish the mission of the Church.

5. The "Make this a repeating event" feature should not be used if you will be deleting Resource requests throughout the year. For example, the Youth dances will be on the 3rd Saturday of each month (if memory serves me correctly). However, at this point it is not known which Stake will host the event each month. Bro. Ramsey will submit a Resource request for each month and notify me which dances will be held at other Stakes, I, in turn, will be able to delete that month's dance from the Resource calendar, freeing the building for others to use. The Church's system is not sophisticated enough to allow one event in a series to be deleted.

6. As we have not been in the new Stake center as we move across the end of a calendar year, any standing events from 2009 (that would not be addressed in item 1. above) should be submitted as a Resource request, if the activity will occur at the new Stake center.

7. The Stake offices (the HC room, in particular) are not able to be scheduled by me. Any such request would be covered directly with Bro. Shipp, outside of the Resource request process.

I greatly appreciate your patience and understanding. While these items may seem rudimentary, we know that by small and simple things great things come to pass. Through meticulous application of a few procedures, unity in the Stake is fostered by limiting scheduling conflicts, avoiding misunderstandings, and circumventing possible resentment. From the point of view of the Stake center building scheduler, it might also make my job a bit easier :-) It will also assist the other building schedulers if Stake events are to be held at their facilities.

Bro. Pfeil

Building Scheduing

To: Building Schedulers:

The resource calendar is such a wonderful tool allowing easy and efficient use of church resources. Thank you for your contribution.

As a refresher, please make sure basic information is typed in or added for every entry either on the front of the calendar or in the back-up information behind the date:

A. Show name of ward (or stake auxiliary, or family name). This is important in understanding appropriate usage and priority, especially when negotiation is needed. Often members or leaders making reservations don’t think to list their ward in the verbiage they submit.

The building scheduler may need to add the Ward name, by figuring out who is doing the reservation if the requester doesn’t identify their ward. Stake reservations that aren’t obvious may need to identify their auxiliary such as employment or AP/YW committee.

B. Show contact name with either an email address or phone # or both. If the person, ward, or group does not provide a contact, then use the name of the person submitting the reservation.

There are still quite a few reservations that don’t have a contact listed.

C. Times for reservation includes set up and take down and is frequently longer than the time of the event. The regular calendar would indicate event time, however it is understood that some resource reservations such as recitals aren’t part of ward or stake calendars.

Listing of times seems to be working well.

D. Parts of building, or equipment needed. Multiple use of buildings is normal, and facilitated by this information. Since there is only one projector per building, reserving a projector on a particular building’s resource calendar is a good idea. Reserving the stake sound system is also a good idea (post to the Stake Center resource). We’d rather not create a separate resource for equipment, but post it on the building resource.

Reserving parts of the building seems to be working well.

Rules of engagement:

Order of priority when selecting dates.

1. Church calendar (Salt Lake)

2. Stake calendar

3. Ward calendar

4. Appropriate family use

Events on the regular calendar would often have a related resource calendar reservation, however when push comes to shove, the regular calendar takes priority even if everything isn’t covered in the resource calendar. An easy example that no one would dispute is that a wedding reception reservation would not be accepted even if General Conference wasn’t shown reserving the building on the resource calendar, or there would be no question that Youth Conference would take the whole building even if the calendar didn’t say so.

A practice that is tempting but is discouraged is blocking out dates, or other protective measures. Reserving every Saturday for 4 weeks to make sure the Saturday that is really wanted is available is not fair and good use of the resource system.

Thanks again,

Br. Gardner, Stake PFR