[Board] 2013 Budget approval

[Frank Warmerdam]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:01 AM, Cameron Shorter
<cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Daniel / Cameron,
>>
>> What is "other professional services" expected to include beyond
>> the professional services for accounting, tax preparation and 501(c)3
>> we have already accounted for?
>
> Daniel, you would be best to expand on this?
>
> Frank, my feeling is that it is wise to have spare budget available for
> unforeseen expenses. This doesn't need to be used if such unforeseen
> expenses don't eventuate.

Cameron,

My opinion is that we don't have to budget for all eventualities.  As
long as we have adequate reserves/income we can pass motions for
special needs.  We put things in the budget to understand likely
expenses and also to "preauthorize" expenses so they don't have to
come back to the board for authorization.  For instance, once we have
authorized funding for SAC, they can spend it in cooperation with the
Treasurer without further board motions.

Who owns the "other professional services" item is not super clear to
me, so I don't know who would be preauthorized to spend that money nor
what would be appropriate to spend it on.

I'd prefer then to keep such open ended items out of the budget, and
instead for us to just address special needs as they come up.

I don't mind an item like "code sprint support" since it gives us a
sense of how much we expect to spend on this over the year, and we can
try to calibrate what we authorize as a board with the idea that all
requests should fit into that limit.

What belongs in, and not in the budget is certainly a fuzzy issue!

>> Sorry for not speaking up sooner.
>
>
> All OSGeo board members,
> I realise that we are all volunteers, but I'm hopeful that we can commit to
> turning around decisions quickly and efficiently, preferably within 2
> working days, and in most cases within 1 working day.

Ouch.

I do try to quickly address cut-and-dried motions.  But open ended
topics like the budget can be challenging to bring to a conclusion and
seem to evolve quite a bit as the thread goes on making it hard to
know the exact state of things without very careful attention.

I've also come to the conclusion that reading email on my mobile
devices where I'm not willing to compose significant replies has
significant downsides.  Something for me to continue struggling with.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Software Developer