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

[Paul Andersen]

John,


A point of clarification that would be useful to me and perhaps others.

Is Option B prevent the board from any fee schedule restructuring? Similar to the end user move to a service plan a few years ago?

I assume Option B allows the board to do modest changes without a consultation up to the 5% and other changes are allowed but with a fee consult?

Or are all further changes beyond a raise prohibited under B?

Thanks

Paul

> On Apr 3, 2024, at 1:53 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Apr 3, 2024, at 1:20 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 9:40 AM ARIN <info at arin.net> wrote:
>>> Introduce a structured approach to fee adjustments, allowing
>>> for an annual increase of no more than 5%, subject to approval
>>> by the Board of Trustees. This strategy aims to offer a predictable
>>> and manageable escalation in fees, aligning more closely with the
>>> budget planning processes of many organizations within our community.
> 
> Hello Bill -
> 
> You’ve got some great questions – let's go through each:
> 
>> That's great if inflation stays far enough below 5% to allow for the
>> cost of new services, but what happens when it doesn't? Break the
>> implicit promise of stability in the fees?
> 
> So it is not the “cost of new services” that is the concern, it’s rather the routine
> increase in ARIN’s own operations costs that we have to deal with…  While we do
> make efforts to rebid significant suppliers (e.g., benefits, telecommunications, etc.)
> in order to manage costs, there are still times when we are unable to avoid seeing
> cost increases in the services that we contract.   In addition, we do provide
> competitive compensation to the staff, and these results in a 2 to 3% increase
> in our salary pool each year.
> 
> As for “new services”, we generally can accommodate the various changes that
> are requested (whether features or policy changes) with the existing resources;
> we balance new feature and maintenance development tasks as needed for this.
> 
>> And what happens when you want to restructure the fees? Is the 5%
>> promise simply void since the new fees are discontinuous from the old?
>> Like what happened to the LRSA folks?
> 
> Having finally achieved a fee schedule that treats all parties equitably, I would
> like to think we’re past the point of further restructuring of the fee schedule…
> 
> However, to be clear, the question before the community is whether we come
> every 2 or 3 years with a proposal to make an adjustment to the existing fee
> schedule that might be quite significant (i.e. potentially more than 10%) or
> would the community prefer that the Board do a small adjustment annually
> based on increase in costs – an approach that is typical in some industries.
> 
>> And philosophically, should ARIN be experiencing a 5% growth that
>> isn't tied to a comparable growth in its customer base? Isn't that
>> called bloat?
> 
> As noted, our costs increase nominally each year based on underlying
> vendors and staff cost, and this does not directly correspond to either
> number of members or number resources in the registry.  In fact, we may
> easily see a reduction in number of members given that the structure of the
> fee schedule encourages consolidation of organizational accounts when
> such is possible (i.e., one can increase the number resources under an RSA
> by 4x before seeing the fee category increment and corresponding service fee
> increase by only 2x.)
> 
> I hope this helps explain somewhat the situation, and the question being asked
> of the members–it is really a question of how the nominal changes in costs get
> accommodated; would the community prefer this to occur routinely as a matter
> of course, or would it prefer revisiting the fees every few years (and potentially
> considering a significantly larger increase at that time).
> 
> Thanks!
> /John
> 
> John Curran
> President and CEO
> American Registry for Internet Numbers
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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