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

[William Herrin]

On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 2:50 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> On 9 Apr 2018, at 1:53 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> 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.
>
>    The entire set of annual reports are all available online here:
>    <https://www.arin.net/about_us/corp_docs/annual_rprt.html>

Thanks John,

I'll spare everyone else the effort of digging it out:

Year: ARIN expenses, ARIN expenses approximated in 2018 dollars

1999: $2,239,707, $3,390,000
2000: $2,806,837, $4,116,000
2001: $3,754,738, $5,318,000
2002: $6,120,209, $8,570,000
2003: $6,357,298, $8,645,000
2004: $6,883,258, $9,204,000
2005: $7,590,880, $9,854,000
2006: $8,653,757, $10,844,000
2007: $9,825,489, $12,021,000
2008: $11,256,656, $13,277,000
2009: $12,141,253, $14,317,000
2010: $13,175,097, $15,139,000
2011: $14,366,655, $16,242,000
2012: $15,551,514, $17,082,000
2013: $15,520,000, $16,781,000
2014: $16,329,920, $17,381,000
2015: $18,039,970, $19,218,000
2016: $21,937,057, $23,055,000
2017: $23,700,000 (projected)
2018: $23,866,000 (projected)

I used https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl to estimate 2018
dollars. Other estimating tools give slightly different, typically
smaller numbers.


>    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.)

Probably better written as Telecommunications then. Folks reading
financial reports understand communications to mean something
different.


> 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.)

I understand this to mean that over the past 5 years ARIN has incurred
approximately $19,000,000 of software development expenses IN ADDITION
TO paying staff software engineer salaries, benefits and similar
employee costs. Is that accurate?


> 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.

Just so I'm clear, no other form of fee change was tabled or considered?

Thanks,
Bill Herrin



-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>