[nc-budget] NC budget 2002 IMPORTANT FOR NC JAN
Philip- Thanks for the quick feedback on this. By now, ICANN management has formally circulated its year-end, 2001 accounting for the DNSO and while I gather that their formal DNSO financial accounts differ slightly from the informal ones that you circulated yesterday, they are common on a few key points: Their December estimates of Registrar Constituency overpayments are now revised upwards in light of their receipt of additional payments from individual registrars and their accounting of the cash balance at year-end is revised upward (from the $41,000 estimate that we have been using) due to lower-than expected spending and some additional revenues. ICANN's report can be found at: http://www.icann.org/dnso/dnso-finances-31dec01.htm While it is clear
that we do not have time to modify the Budget Committee's report in time for
today's meeting, we can easily amend it (or anyone can propose that it be
amended) from the floor during the Council meeting.
On the amount
proposed for a re-payment to an agent of the Registrar Constituency, for
example, I intend to propose an amendment to the Committee's report increasing
the amount to the exact, final amount of the Constituency's 2001
overpayment.
On the second item
that you raise, whether we should retain around $60,000 in reserves as we go
into 2002 (instead of what the Budget Committee had previously projected as
around $30,000), the ICANN management report adds an important
clarification. In it, you will now note that ICANN management --as
the custodian of our funds and the legal entity that will assume our contractual
obligations to our suppliers-- now clarifies that it will require
that we retain a cash reserve of around $60,000. They obviously have an
obligation to protect themselves against any shortfall in DNSO
fund-raising, so they are in my view within their rights to impose reasonable
limits on us if we wish to rely on their no-charge services to
us.
Assuming that we
accept their requirement for a $60,000 cash reserve, it would no be possible to
address your proposal that we allocate some of the 2001 year-end surplus towards
2002 DNSO operating expenses.
Roger
Chair
Names Council Budget
Committee
Roger J.
Cochetti
Senior Vice President & Chief Policy Officer VeriSign rcochetti@verisign.com 202-973-6600
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