[Ec-ncuc] Video update

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 07:30:44PM +0000, Milton L Mueller (mueller at syr.edu) wrote:

> Folks, I suggest we leave the editing decisions to the professionals
> and not start poking fingers into minutiae. You're overseers not
> micromanagers.

As far as I can tell, we are asked to decide whether to spend 5%, 10%
or 14% of our accumulated funds on a project we know next to nothing
about. I don't know how much money has been spent on it, I don't know
how much money we really have, if there are other planned uses for it,
nor how long we should expect it to last. Which makes it rather hard
to make informed decisions.

Perhaps all old-timers here have all that information in their
heads, but as a newcomer I don't, sorry. I have to ask.

> Certainly the EC has the authority to approve any additional
> expenditures. That's why you were asked about the next steps. But
> let's avoid the temptation that some EC members might feel, to
> assert their authority for the sake of asserting their authority.

I assert the need to KNOW what I'm supposed to decide about.
That is, about *money*, not about video editing.

Budget decisions on the order of 10% are not micromanagement.

Of course I don't really know how much big our budget were if we
had one, so I may be wrong about the significance of this.
In general it would be perfectly reasonable to let the
treasurer spend small amounts of money on his or her discretion
(duly documented for later review of course),
but a limit on that would have to be decided in advance,
and with $40k budget I'd think it should be hundreds rather
than thousands of dollars.

Is there any kind of documentation of how NCUC has spent
its money in the past? If not proper financial statements,
at least something with real numbers in it.
Raw bank statements maybe?

> Refusing to allocate any more money at this point would not, in my
> opinion, be a very wise decision given that we have already spent
> money to produce it and refusing to finish it basically wastes that
> investment.

Does "throwing good money after the bad" ring any bells?
(Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment)

Here it is actually funny though, since we have been told
absolutely nothing of the amount of money already spent,
despite repeated requests (by me and Ed at least).
Could you enlighten us?

> Let's not lose sight of the basic fact that led to the decision to
> start this project to begin with,

Is there any proper documentation of that decision somewhere?

> I can't tell you how many times I've heard energetic incoming EC
> members or other activists saying that we need a brochure or some
> other kind of introduction to the NCUC for basic "who are we?"
> publicity. We're about to get one, and a good one.

That would be nice. As would be lots of other things money can buy.
But I won't buy nice things without checking first if I can afford
them. Neither for myself nor for organizations where I'm responsible
for such decisions. And I don't know if we can afford this.

If our past financial statements &c are somewhere online and
I've just failed to find them, my apologies - a pointer
would be appreciated.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen