[ARIN-consult] Consultation on Proposed 2018 Fee Schedule Changes

[John Curran]

On 9 Apr 2018, at 1:53 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us<mailto:bill at herrin.us>> wrote:

Some thoughts and questions:

1. Would you give us a historical perspective on the budget? What has
ARIN spent each year since its inception in 1997? It would be helpful
to see it in both actual and 2018 dollars.

Bill -

   The entire set of annual reports are all available online here:
   <https://www.arin.net/about_us/corp_docs/annual_rprt.html>

2. The communications and outreach budgets total more than 1.5M which
excludes member meetings and travel. What are they spent on?

   Communications is probably better read as “Telecommunications”
   (i.e. composed of our main computing collocation sites and circuits
   interconnecting same, and our additional public-facing-sites colocated
   in Bay Area and Carribbean.)

   Outreach includes costs of supporting events such as ARIN One the Road
   series ARIN presence at speaking events such as HostingCon, ISPCA,
   WISPA, and the miscellaneous support for organizations that we are present
   at such as the US Internet governance forum (IGF), Caribbean IGF, etc.

3. Are Bill Woodcock's 88 staff and 45 engineer numbers correct? Would
you elaborate?

   Yes, it is approximately correct.

4. Would you break down the $1.5M travel budget?

   That includes travel performed by the ARIN Board of Trustees, ARIN Advisory Council,
   ARIN ASO/AC members, and ARIN staff across all departments.

5. What are you depreciating at more than 15% of the budget?

   As reported in ARIN’s audited financials, ARIN depreciates major system software
   development costs over 5 years with straight-line depreciation. (Post-implementation
   and operational costs are expensed as incurred.)

6. What alternatives to increasing end-user registration fees did the
board evaluate? Why does it recommend increasing end-user fees instead
of those alternatives?

   As I noted in previous email, the Board considered the alternative of not raising the fees
   and facing a slow erosion of the reserves over time; given the reduction in engineering
   surge staffing planned in 2019, the annual net-to-reserves impact is modest enough that
   a change is maintenance fees is not absolutely required, but simply prudent if we wish to
   maintain level reserves.

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN




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