Genesis Adopts Reserve Investment Plan

After more than two years of development, study, and discussion, the Genesis Board, the Temple Beth Emeth Board, and St. Clare's Vestry have agreed on how Genesis will plan and fund major building projects in the decades ahead.

The decision implements the Reserve Investment Plan (RIP), a long-range planning framework developed for the Genesis property, and establishes a process for putting it practice. Beginning in fiscal year 2026-27, Temple Beth Emeth and St. Clare's will each contribute $50,000 annually to the Genesis Building Systems Replacement Plan (BSRP) Reserve Fund, with future increases tied to inflation.

The decision concludes a process that began several years ago as Genesis leaders took a closer look at the future needs of a building that has grown continuously since the 1950s.

Big Building, Big Perspectives

Genesis maintains the BSRP Reserve Fund to pay for most major capital expenses.

Over the past several years, it had become increasingly clear to Genesis Board leaders and Building Committee members that the annual contribution amounts had become insufficient to fund our needs, considering the size, complexity, and age of our building and its systems. Genesis’ efforts to make due had become unrealistic.

Our building has grown immensely since its origins. The original church sanctuary dates to 1956. Additional classroom and office space were added in 1968, while major expansions in 1974 and 1994 brought our building to the roughly 36,000 square feet it encompasses today.

Each construction phase brought its own equipment and infrastructure. Some of those systems have already been replaced, while others remain in service decades later. Rooftop HVAC units, elevators, kitchen equipment, sound systems, security systems, networking infrastructure, windows, doors, and flooring all age on different schedules and carry widely different price tags. While it’s not terribly difficult to consider replacing any of those components in isolation, how could Genesis effectively plan to maintain and replace all of them over time?

By 2024, longtime Genesis leader and past president Jim Downward and Facilities Attendant Steven Kurz had begun assembling information about the age and expected life-span of all of those systems and translating that information into an elaborate plan capable of modeling future needs over a period of decades.

The result became known as the Reserve Investment Plan, or RIP.

The RIP includes an extensive spreadsheet tool that tracks major building systems, projected replacement dates, estimated costs, reserve balances, and planning assumptions. Changing one assumption changes the projections throughout the model. A rooftop unit might be replaced sooner or later. A gas-fired system might eventually be replaced by a heat pump. A flooring project might be accelerated, deferred, or broken into phases. Reserve contributions might rise or remain unchanged.

The RIP Tool allows Genesis leadership to prioritize options and to see how today's decisions would affect future needs.

Congregants interested in exploring the RIP Tool for themselves are invited to download this public version and experiment. This version starts with the Medium Plan, as explained below.

An Outside Review and a Task Force

As work on the RIP developed, Temple Beth Emeth commissioned a professional reserve study from Building Reserves, Inc., a firm specializing in long-range facility planning.

Rather than replacing the RIP, that consultant's report became part of a larger review process.

Representatives from Genesis, Temple Beth Emeth, and St. Clare's formed a Building Reserve Task Force and spent much of 2025 comparing the two approaches. Members reviewed assumptions, replacement schedules, project priorities, and cost estimates. The goal was to understand where the studies agreed, where they differed, and what each contributed to understanding the building's future needs.

The task force developed and ultimately presented three alternatives for the boards to consider.

The three plans reflected different approaches to caring for the campus over the coming decades. The Low Plan focused on keeping the building operational and code-compliant with the lowest long-term financial commitment from the congregations, accepting a greater likelihood that some projects would be postponed or addressed only when they became necessary. The High Plan assumed Genesis would move forward with nearly every significant project identified through the RIP and reserve study, maintain the campus at the highest level, and pursue environmental and facility-improvement goals as opportunities arose. Between them sat the Medium Plan, which aimed to keep the building in strong condition while making more selective choices about timing, scope, and priorities.

These choices represent a broader discussion about stewardship. How much should Genesis invest in a building shared by two congregations? Which projects should be addressed before they become urgent? Which improvements could reasonably wait? How much flexibility should future boards retain when circumstances change? The differences between the three plans reflected different answers to those questions.

While all three plans agreed on some things, such as the need to modernize the elevators, the differences between them can be seen clearly in other concrete cases. Under the High Plan, the Social Hall skylight would be replaced when it reaches the end of its useful life, while the Medium Plan would abandon the skylight and simply cover the opening.

The High Plan also moved a number of flooring, window, and door projects forward, while the Medium Plan delayed some of them and the Low Plan delayed them further still. The plans also differed in how aggressively Genesis would pursue carbon-neutrality goals when major mechanical systems reached the end of their lives. The High Plan generally assumed earlier replacement of fossil-fuel-based systems and a faster transition to lower-carbon alternatives, while the Medium and Low plans stretched that transition over a longer period.

From Three Plans to One

These recommendations were discussed by the Genesis Board, Temple Beth Emeth Board, and St. Clare's Vestry over the course of many months.

The Medium Plan gradually emerged as the option with the broadest support, but the discussion did not end there.

At the 2025 Tri-board meeting, several participants argued that aspects of the High Plan should remain within reach even if the Medium Plan became the official baseline. The discussion eventually shifted toward finding a way to combine the financial discipline of the Medium Plan with the flexibility to pursue additional projects when circumstances justified them.

That thinking carried directly into the implementation plan approved this month.

Sound the Alarm: A Real-World Example

While the RIP discussions were underway, Genesis found itself dealing with one of the largest building projects in its recent history: replacement of the fire alarm system, whose obsolete components were no longer code compliant.

The fire alarm could not wait for the discussion to conclude. Board members explored repair options, including installation of a re-certified replacement board for a discontinued system, but a complete replacement ultimately became unavoidable. A new voice-evacuation fire alarm system was installed this spring at a cost well into six figures.

The fire alarm project thereby became the last major capital project funded under the old “special assessment” model.

Had the RIP and the enhanced BSRP funding levels already been in place for a number of years, the fire alarm replacement would have been funded through the accumulated reserves instead of a special assessment.

While we cannot plan for every surprise, we can make special assessments far less common by identifying major needs long before they become urgent.

Implementing the Plan

Under the implementation plan, the Building Committee will review the RIP every six months and provide two sets of recommendations to the boards.

First, the committee will identify upcoming projects that fit within the adopted Medium Plan and available reserve funding. Second, it will identify projects that could become practical or more efficient in the long-term if additional resources become available through grants, donations, fundraising efforts, cost savings, or other opportunities.

This approach grew out of discussions during the Tri-board process. While the Medium Plan emerged as the preferred baseline, several participants argued that Genesis should continue evaluating projects that fell outside that framework if circumstances justified them. The implementation plan preserves that flexibility while establishing the Medium Plan as the organization’s default path forward.

The plan also allows for situations in which one congregation wishes to fund a project that the other congregation does not consider a priority at that time. Such proposals would still move through the normal review process, but the framework provides a mechanism for them to be considered.

The RIP will continue to be updated as building conditions, costs, priorities, and opportunities change.

A Framework for the Future

The RIP and the implementation plan approved this month represent more than two years of effort by Genesis board members and staff, an outside consultant, a dedicated tri-board task force, and the leadership of all three organizations.

The RIP and implementation plan have now been endorsed by the leadership of Genesis, Temple Beth Emeth, and St. Clare’s. Consensus around the implementation plan as is was strong enough that leadership cancelled the Tri-board meeting originally scheduled for June to continue those discussions.

Temple Beth Emeth plans a formal re-endorsement of the final document at its September board meeting, while St. Clare’s leadership is expected to seek formal Vestry endorsement in the coming months.

Together, we have produced a planning framework—and a planning tool—that Genesis expects to use for decades to come. The RIP will continue to evolve as projects are completed, costs change, and new information becomes available. It provides a foundation for caring for our shared place of worship and planning for its future.