Chancellor Karlsvalt as a citizen of the CDS I’d like to personally thank you for your fast actions in putting together a proposed budget for the 14th term. A proposed budget within 12 days of the start of the term must be some kind of record. If I remember correctly the 12th term never had a proposed budget and the earliest I can find a record of a budget in the 13th term was over three months into the term, Sunday September 12, 2010 at 9:38pm to be exact. http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php? ... 987#p16455 Even though this link states that this was the “former” budget for the 13th term I can’t find this budget posted anywhere else. It’s almost like this budget was created in hindsight. But that’s neither here nor there. You have come right out of the gate and taken the reins of your position and I commend you for that.
BusinessDictionary.com defines the term budget as follows, “estimate of costs, revenues, and resources over a specified period, reflecting a management’s reading of future financial conditions. One of the most important administrative tools, a budget serves also as a (1) plan of action for achieving quantified objectives, (2) standard for measuring performance, and (3) device for coping with foreseeable adverse situations.” In my opinion a budget isn’t necessarily written in stone. It’s sort of like a game plan for a football or soccer game. You try to plan for the future but you are aware that things may or may not happen that may change your game plan.
Rose I will preface the following with this statement. I have nothing but respect for you and what you have done in and for the CDS and the AA SIMS for that matter, but I personally feel that your response to Tor’s budget, I’m struggling to find the right words but can I say kind of out of line? From the looks of it, and this is only an assumption on my part, it looks like Tor basically took the last terms budget and tweaked it where he felt it needed to be tweaked, in order to present a proposed budget for this term. There is nothing wrong with that. It helps to have a foundation to build upon.
You ask the RA to look carefully at the budget and you have an issue to the amount allocated for musical and cultural events. I draw your attention to the “former budget” I linked to earlier. The amount allocated in that budget for program expenses, musician fees, and distribution to regional committees is $51,166L. If you look at this budget which we are suppose to assume was for the 13th term from the beginning when in reality it wasn’t because it doesn’t include any of the AA SIMS in it. This budget was clearly produced after the dissolution of the CDS merger. I now bring your attention to the “revised” budget for the 13th term which was presented by our chancellor on Saturday September 11, 2010 at 11:06pm the amount budgeted for the exact same thing jumped to $67,000L which is $8,000L more a month than our current chancellor is proposing.
Month Budgeted Spent
June 51,166 21,500
July 51,166 22,500
August 67,000 27,000
September 67,000 113,047
October 66,400 71,000
Totals 302,732 255,047
As you can see from last term just because it is budgeted doesn’t necessarily mean that is what is going to be spent. Even with the excessive expenditures in September and October the five out of the six months were under budget by $47,685.
http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3125
http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3165
http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3133
Soro I do not know you personally at all in SL. I think we may have run across each other once or twice in the past but I honestly don’t remember having any type of in depth conversations with you as I have with Rose in the past. I do not know your personal accomplishments in the CDS but I will basically state like I did to Rose that I in no way mean any disrespect to you in my response.
I think your idea of “a comparison between the proposed budget and the actual expenditures for the preceding two years along with a disclosure as to what has been approved as budgeted for previous two years” a wonderful idea. Is this something that you can make happen and bring to the table? If someone has a good idea why can’t they take the reins so to speak and make it happen? I became a citizen of the CDS and noticed there was nothing in place that showed which citizen owned which parcel. I took the initiative and developed my CDS Citizen/Owners List and uploaded it to Google Docs for all to see. This term I hope to have it available directly on the portal.
There are many issues that are worthy of the Chancellor’s and the RA’s attention this quarter. Possible restructuring of tiers is certainly one that needs to be looked at. Even more so is the question of why are we selling repossessed property for the same amount we sold it the first time around when it was a brand new SIM? You have a parcel that you’ve already covered your expenses and possibly a small profit on and you repossess that parcel and put it on the market for the same amount again? Pure profit may be a nice idea but I feel lots of yellow splotches on our maps and the lack of tier income from those yellow splotches outweighs the pure profit concept.
Let us allow our Chancellor to get his bearings before we put his feet into the fire. Let us all work together as a team or dare I say as a family and see how well we can take our little place in the SL world and make it better. Thank you.
Trebor Warcliffe