# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S32
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

32   Proceedings of the 19th General [Synod], or

matters that did not directly belong to the building itself, this difficult
task fell to the supervisory board, which has tried to discharge it to the
best of its knowledge and conscience. — The accounts concerning this
are already before the Reverend Synod in the General Treasurer's
financial report." (Report of the supervisory board.)

Resolved, that the request made by the supervisory board —
that the Synod defray, out of the synodical treasury, the $1,000 in
costs caused by heating the seminary during the past winter — cannot
be granted, since covering these costs is a matter for the manager of
the household treasury, and they are therefore to be taken from that
treasury instead.

"Since the itemized accounts for the buildings erected have
already been brought to the whole Synod's attention by the General
Treasurer, Mr. E. F. W. Meier, nothing remains for the building
committee except to give the Reverend Synod an explanation and
account of the considerable overrun of the building sum it had fixed. On
this point the committee states at once, in advance, that it does not
wish to absolve itself of all blame — that the costs could and should
have been kept lower, and various things could have been saved. We
hope, however, that the Reverend Synod will recognize that this did not
happen through any careless disregard or unscrupulous defiance, on the
committee's part, of the synodical resolutions given, but that the main
causes of the great increase in cost lay outside the committee's
calculation and control.

"Without doubt it will be willingly conceded, without objection, by
experts and well-meaning persons in the Synod, that the sum of about
$90,000 for the seminary was, from the outset, set too low by the
architect. This sum became all the more disastrous as building
materials and wages rose, soon after the synodical assembly, by at least
25 percent, and remained so up to the present day — while, after all, a
'handsome, solid building, sufficient for a long series of years' was
supposed to be erected, and, in addition, 10 percent of the whole
building sum was designated for the exterior ornamentation of the
building. — Since the committee was bound to see to it that a solid
building was erected, it chose, throughout, not only the best building
material but also the best workers. It did not award the contracts to
whoever made the lowest bid, but to whoever, among the lower bidders,
was the most competent and reliable. That this procedure — which was
without doubt the only correct one — given the rise in the prices of
material and labor, and given a building of such extent,