[council] ICANN budget

[Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au>]

Just to re-iterate a comment I made in the last namescouncil call.

ICANN should base its budget on revenue it can receive from its contracts
(with registries, registrars and others), as well as revenue it can receive
from services (e.g it could charge  ccltds for administrative changes to the
root zonefile, and charge for attendance at the ICANN meetings).  It should
determine what services it can provide with this base level of funding.  If
the services available with the current base are not sufficient, then ICANN
could consider raising further revenue from these contracts.  However the
contracts have mechanisms included to ensure that registries and registrars
have some input to the budget setting process (as they are the main fee
payers to ICANN).  For example, I understand that the registrars have been
asked to accept a 30% increase in the next budget.  I would not like to see
this input removed from a future model, and I would like to see any
increases in funding borne by registries as well as registrars.

In terms of contracts ICANN has not yet signed - it should make provisions
for the expected revenue and expected services it can provide with this
revenue.  If the revenue is not received, then the services will not be
provided.

Thus I would like to see better segmentation of the budget, for revenue that
is reasonably certain versus revenue that is estimated but for which no
contracts have been signed.
It could be possible to have three budgets - a base (assuming no additional
contract signed), an expected (including contracts for which there is a
reasonable expectation of signing e.g RIRs), and optimistic (including
contracts for which it is hoped to sign - e.g cctlds).

As a gtld registrar I would like to see that the base budget was capable of
serving the needs of gtld registries, gtld registrars, and gtld domain name
registrants.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin