[ARIN-consult] Consultation on Approaches for Adjusting the ARIN Registration Services Plan Fee Schedule

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 4:40 PM ARIN <info at arin.net> wrote:

> Given the ongoing nature of these expenses, and in pursuit of a sustainable fiscal strategy, the ARIN Board of Trustees is considering two distinct approaches for future fee adjustments:

I (and I presume most) do not like to see fees
increasing, but I (and I presume most) do
understand that adjustments need to be made
over time.  I also do not think that it is possible
to predict with any accuracy what that increase
will need to be in the future (inflation was about
8% not all that long ago), so restricting it to a
5% increase is likely too limiting unless that
number is intended to be in addition to the
experienced inflation rate.  I do think a regular
(likely) smaller regular increases are better
than a few randomly scheduled chosen larger
ones (so option (b)).

As I recall, a common complaint about
adjustments was the lack of advanced notice
so that organizations can make budgeting
requests for their next fiscal period (as
changing a budget request in the middle
of an organizations fiscal period can be
easy, or very difficult, depending on the
organization and the size of the increase
itself, and predicting an increase during the
budget request process that had not been
communicated by the vendor (rather than
reflecting actuals) is sometimes frowned
upon).

For organizations whose current renewal
date is near the end of their fiscal period
they may wish to see close to 15 months of
advanced notice before the fees change
(which might require some amount of
clairvoyance by the board to know what
ARIN's revenue needs will be that far into
the future).

Perhaps a solution to the notice issue
would be to allow organizations to move
their renewal dates to a month that more
closely aligns with their internal
budgetary cycles.