RE: Finances

[telenet!rootbeer!dmontuor@uunet.uu.net (Dave Montuori)]

Greetings to Earl Dafydd and everyone else sweating on this hot day at
Cheapside, from Evan da Collaureo, hayfever sufferer.

The information I have is from Allasondrea and Jaelle, who between them
have done both the kingdom-great-officer thing and handled recent order
mailings. Thus, lowly as I am, I still must beg to differ with Dafydd.

The "Postage" item in the budget, he says in part,

> ...is NOT for postage of the Orders (Peerage or Kingdom).  The
>Orders have always handled their own postage, either through donations
>and raffles and fundraisers, or through asking their members to donate
>stamps or SASEs.  I am in every single order, I am certain that no
>significant cost of postage goes to the Kingdom from them.

Some (though, I think, not all) of the orders *have* in the past year
asked for reimbursement of postage expenses. This comes out of the
Postage sub-budget.

Should we allow this? Perhaps not -- I'll leave it to the members of
the orders (as I'm not in any of them) to determine how to handle their
own postage, and take them completely (pref. by Kingdom Law) out of
possible range of this loop.

> ...is NOT for postage of the Kingdom officers--that is what their
>stipend is for (75$ per reign per officer).  That is a separate
>item in the budget.

Maybe not all of the GOofS *use* the Postage reimbursement, *but they
have the ability to do so.* Conversations last night with folks other
than Allasondrea and Jaelle have confirmed this beyond any doubt in
my mind. The $75 stipend is for *non-postage* expenses, and for most
officers, probably doesn't quite make it to the end of the reign
even so.

Which offices use the most stamps? Speculation last night was that the
Minister of the Lists probably has the biggest mailing load, followed
by the Seneschallate, but we haven't the figures.

Which offices use Postage more than others? Ah, *different* question --
that depends on who draws on the Postage budget. 

If we had actual figures, perhaps Postage could be added to the GOofS
stipend; OTOH, the reimbursement acct method may not be so terrible.
-----

My reason for seeming to come down so hard on this point is *NOT* that
I think the budget is fine as is. On the contrary, anyone who was in my
company doing SCA stuff in the past week knows all too well that I
think this budget rather too large. However, in the absence of real
data showing who *has* used the Postage budget in the past few years,
and how much was actually spent in the name of Postage, we really
can't tell if $1000 is too high a figure: for the nonce at least,
this item is a red herring. Cut the budget by all means, but let's
cut it where we *know* we can afford to do so -- starting with
anything to do with going out-of kingdom (incl. Pennsic) -- making
it clear that specific needs in this area (Estrella '94 perhaps)
should be paid for by specific fundraisers, and not budgeted for
on an ongoing basis.

Evan