[wplug] [wplug-announce] 1st annual membership meeting discussion on wplug-plan

[Bill Moran]

Chris Ott wrote:
>
> Beth Lynn wrote:
>>
>> WPLUG Members are those [who]
>>
>> 2. Paid dues of $5. In person, by proxy, or via paypal.
>
> While we're on this subject, I'd like to ask: is this $5 per year, per
> month, per minute, or just $5 forever. Everything else you've written
> implies $5 per year, but I don't see how you could fund a year's worth
> of pizza coupons for that small an amount.

The $5 is provisional - for the first year until the group has fully
transitioned to the new government.  For your $5, you get 1 free pizza
coupon.  If you want pizza at the next meeting after that, you'll have
to chip in again.

The reason the provisional dues exists, is because it's the duty of
the membership to decide what dues will be, but nobody can be a member
until they've paid dues - so we have a chicken/egg scenerio.  To work
around it, the first year's dues have been set (somewhat arbitrarily)
at $5.

Based on how the new bylaws are organized, here's what I expect to happen
when the new board takes control:
1) Pretty quickly, the new board will draw up a list of programs that they
   feel WPLUG should support - this will be presented to the membership.
   Since only the membership can start new programs, the board is only
   making a recommendation.
2) Once the list of WPLUG-endorsed programs has been approved/created by
   the membership, the board will look over that list and come up with
   some sort of budget as to how much they expect each program to cost
   per year.  The cost of all programs will be added up, and divided by
   the number of members.  The resulting number will be suggested by the
   board as the new yearly dues.
3) Assuming the board has done it's math correctly, the membership will
   approve the new dues, and those dues will take effect immediately.
   Any new members who join after will have to pay the new dues, and
   any existing members will have to pay the new dues when it's time to
   renew their membership.

A few points:
1) I don't expect the membership will want to create a lot of new
   programs right now, so I don't expect the dues to change much from
   $5/year.  My guess is that the membership will just approve the
   existing programs (such as GUMs, installfests, and the wplug.org
   server)
2) The membership can change the yearly dues any time they can get enough
   people together to have a quorum to vote.  In practice, I doubt the
   dues will change very often.  I expect if the membership creates a new
   program, there will be a requirement to review the budget and see if
   it requires increased dues, but new programs aren't likely to be
   approved very often.  A new program is a pretty big deal.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com