[members-discuss] Surprise on renew fees

My understanding is that whilst we were voting on the charging scheme, most people were objecting to the budget and that's why it failed. 

The problem was that we couldnt vote on these individually .. And the down side is that the spending will continue regardless. 

On the day there were comments about just spending from reserves and that's what they were there for ... With an after thought mention of "we'll see if there is anywhere we can trim some fat"

I specifically raised a budgetary question at the AGM re RPKI which was deflected and dropped before the vote so no-one had the information requested in advance of the vote (€1.6m spent to date on RPKI and more to come as it was voted through) etc. 

When quizzed on the budgets and why we had no costs we were told that the costs should  have been included over the last few years but were omitted and a promise that they would be detailed for next year. 

I'm still not sure how/where we get to review these other than to reject another charging scheme and so on until reserves are spent. (which would be pointless). Hopefully someone will advise me. In other organisations I am a member of the budget is always voted on at the AGM. If it fails then the previous years budget prevails until a consensus and EGM (or next AGM) agree the new budget. 

Staffing costs are of course the highest .. There were also flippant remarks about not needing approval for choosing the brand of coffee used in house but tbh that just shows in my mind how little consideration there is for our thoughts on the budget / etc (I don't care which brand of coffee they use, I do care how they spend our money overall however). 

The membership fees are small and almost irrelevant, the principal however is not .. And the additional resource fees add up to potentially a hell of a lot more both in ripe cost and the real cost of admin and compliance.... All at a time when our euro buys less and less .. Or in other words our costs are increasing and our profits being eroded. 

-- 
Jon Morby
fido.net - the internet made simple!
tel: 0845 004 3050
fax: 0845 004 3051

On 14 Dec 2011, at 18:58, "Carlos Friacas" <cfriacas at fccn.pt> wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 14 Dec 2011, Nigel Titley wrote:
> 
>>> Which is the reason? There was a public vote with a public result?
>> 
>> Yes. The charging scheme is always voted on by the membership, every
>> year.
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I've been a bit far from these issues, but as far as i understood, the 
> charging scheme wasn't directly voted upon by members, right?
> Members voted on the Yearly Budget, and the charging scheme is just a 
> subset of that, correct?
> It was not possible to approve the charging scheme, and at the same time 
> (with a different cast of votes) reject the Budget, right?
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Carlos
> 
> 
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