Referenda Gallore!
There are going to be five referendum questions to be considered this year.
I will post the final approved version of each question and a blurb about each including some background for some of the more contentious ones.
DASSS (Dalhousie Arts and Social Sciences Society): is asking for a $2/semester/student increase to their current levy of $6/semester/student. This will only be voted on those students that are currently enrolled in an Arts and Social Sciences course.
The question:
Whereas the Dalhousie Arts and Social Sciences Society (DASSS), funded by the Arts Society Levy, represents all undergraduate students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), and financially supports all undergraduate FASS societies;
Whereas undergraduate FASS societies aim to build communities of students within a department or a program, and perform functions such as publishing academic journals, hosting social events, and engaging in community initiatives;
Whereas the number of undergraduate FASS societies has grown from 11 to 15 in the past 2 years, and with more currently seeking recognition, the financial state of DASSS is becoming increasingly unsustainable without a corresponding increase in the Arts Society Levy;
Do you support a $2 per semester increase in the Arts Society Levy from $6 per semester to $8 per semester per full-time undergraduate Arts and Social Sciences student?
Yes/No
DUNS (Dalhousie University Nursing Society): is asking for an increase of $10/full time student/year for a total of $40/student/year. This will only be voted on by DUNS members.
The question:
Whereas Canadian Nursing Students’ Association (CNSA) membership fees are increasing from $5 per full time student per year to $10 per full time student per year. Failure to pay fees would mean withdrawal from this association which represents nursing students and their interests on a National level;
Whereas Dalhousie University nursing students are putting forward a bid to host the 2013 CNSA National Conference, an event that will draw over 800 nursing students from across the country to Dalhousie University and Halifax. We must be a member school to host this conference;
Whereas Student involvement in DUNS events has increased, and we hope to sustain current events, create new events, and make events free or tickets low in price to allow access for all nursing students;
Whereas the Dalhousie University School of Nursing has informed us that due to cut backs they will no longer be able to provide the DUNS with the same level of financial support to host student/faculty events (such as the annual Wine and Cheese);
Whereas DUNS would like to offer a greater number of Travel and Study Grants to deserving nursing students to allow them to attend conferences and participate in other enriching learning opportunities and events (currently we offer 5 $100 grants per year);
Whereas Current BScN student fees are $30 ($15 per semester) with $5 funding CNSA membership and $25 funding DUNS operating costs and events.
Do you support a $10 increase, from $30 per year to $40 per year, for the BScN student auxiliary fee? Of which $5 would be used to pay for your Canadian Nursing Students’ Association (CNSA) membership fee and $5 would be used to fund Dalhousie University Nursing Society operating costs and student events.
Yes/No?
DWC (Dalhousie Women’s Centre): is asking for a $0.79 increase that matches inflation since the student levy was introduced. All Dal students are able to vote on this referendum question. The DWC told Council they were running a parallel referendum question at King’s as King’s students also contribute to the DWC.
The DWC has had some issues since losing their long-term director Liz a few years ago. They have now hired two employees and a significant portion of their budget goes to their salaries (I’ve been told it’s something in the realm of 90%).
The question:
Whereas: The Dalhousie Women’s Centre has represented students who experience gender discrimination since opening in 1993;
Whereas: The Dalhousie Women’s Centre provides services to the Dalhousie community including, but not limited to: affordable childcare, support for low income families, sexual assault support and response, education programming and training for a variety of student union staff, students, and professors, and a supportive environment in a non-judgmental, positive space;
Whereas: The Dalhousie Women’s Centre has operated from a student levy established at $2.00 per full-time student in 1993 and increased to $2.35 per full-time student in 1998;
Do you support the direct levy to the Dalhousie Women’s Centre be increased by $0.79 per student to a total of $3.14 per year?
Yes/No
NSPIRG (Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group): is asking for an additional $1/semester/full-time student increase of their current levy of $2/semester/full-time student. This referendum question would also introduce a new levy of $1/semester/part-time student. So full-time students will pay $3/semester and part-time students will pay $1/semester if this question is approved. All Dal students are able to vote on this referendum question.
An issue with this referendum question is that proper procedure was not followed. Council needs two weeks notice before considering the referendum question. Then Council sends the proposed question to both the Board of Operations and the Elections Committee to review the proposed question. These two bodies then report back to Council. Council can then approve the referendum question by a 2/3 majority. The problem here is that no notice was given and last night’s meeting was the last opportunity to have Council give final approval to a referendum question before the election. Quick thinking meant that enough Board of Operations members and Elections Committee members were called in for an emergency meeting. The two bodies did reach quorum (7 at Board of Ops, 3 at Elections Committee) and returned the question to Council. Council then acquiesced and allowed the NSPIRG question to be considered (it required unanimous consent and there were a number of abstentions but no opposition). The councillors that abstained gave reasons that while they were against the running roughshod over procedure, it would be disrespectful of the Board of Ops and Elections Committee members that came in at 10pm. So, after ignoring procedure, Council voted to allow the NSPIRG referendum question to go to ballot.
The previous discussion does not comment on the merits of the referendum question. I assume that will occur in the comments or future Punditry posts. However, I do find it interesting that two societies have brought levy increase amounts tied to inflation but have come up with different amounts based on similar previous levies. I’m not terribly familiar with calculating inflation, but that might be something to look into. Also, on all of the other society questions, Evan Price (VP Finance & Operations) commented on the state of the societies’ books for informational value; I don’t believe he made a comment about NSPIRG’s books last night.
The question:
Whereas: The Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group (NSPIRG-Dal) has worked for environmental and social justice on campus and in the community since opening in 1990.
Whereas: NSPIRG-Dal provides services to the Dalhousie community including, but not limited to: alternative resource library, Seymour Green urban garden and workshops, grassroots project funding and support, human rights advocacy, public lectures and seminars on environmental and social issues, original research and publications, training for a variety of students and professors, and a supportive environment in a non-judgmental, positive space.
Whereas: NSPIRG-Dal has operated from a student levy established in 1990 at $2.00 per full time student per semester and has not increased to account for inflation. The inflation on this amount since 1990 is calculated to be $1.00.
Do you support the direct levy to the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group (NSPIRG-Dal) be increased by $1.00 per part time student to a total of $1.00 per semester and $1.00 per full time student to a total of $3.00 per semester?
Yes/No
ANSSA (Alliance of Nova Scotia Students Associations): is asking for a ‘top up’ of $3/full-time student and $2/part-time student. This levy will be added to the fee the DSU already pays to ANSSA but that currently comes out of the DSU’s operating budget. The current ANSSA fee has never been raised as a levy. All Dal students are able to vote on this referendum question.
ANSSA is hoping to expand its operations through the increase in fees. This includes hiring more staff (up to three staff members with the proposed positions being an Executive Director, a PR/Communications person, and a Researcher/Admin person. There is also discussion about expanding ANSSA’s mandate to include various things such as leadership outside the PSE setting while building on current leadership initiatives (such as working with student Board of Governors’ members).
What should stand out in this referendum question are the final five words in the question – “subject to ratification by council”. This was presented as a way for Council to ensure that certain changes were made that ANSSA has promised will be explored. Due to the new timing of the DSU elections, concrete changes have not been developed by ANSSA yet. There is a planning retreat scheduled for early March. This clause allows DSU Council to have similar powers that other member schools of ANSSA have over raising fees (Dal and SMU are the only two members that need to take the fee rise to their members via referendum; the rest are doing it through their councils) if what has been discussed does not come to fruition. What has been discussed includes professionalizing the Board in such a way that it will be efficient as well as creating some sort of body that will enable certain constituencies that are not always well heard at the ANSSA table to have more direct input (such as professional students, international students, graduate students – or the groups that did not get adequate protection under the new Memorandum of Understanding).
The question:
Whereas, the provincial government is cutting funding to universities with expectations of tuition increases;
Whereas, the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA) presents thoughtful solutions to make Nova Scotia’s university system accessible, affordable and of the highest quality;
Whereas, existing fee levels of $2.65 for full time students and $1.58 for part time students are insufficient to meet the member demands for an organization with increased capacity to deliver additional projects and campaigns, including expansion of services and outreach;
Do you support a Dalhousie Student Union fee increase of an additional $3.00 for full-time students and an additional $2.00 for part-time students per academic year, for membership fee increases to the Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations (ANSSA), the Dalhousie Student Union’s provincial lobby organization, subject to ratification by council?
Yes/No
tl;dr
Page breaks are your friend.
I agree and when I figure out how to do that I will make it happen
Your point about inflation did not go unnoticed. The Women’s Centre should have raised their levy by $0.74 if they merely wanted to match inflation. For NSPIRG, it would be $1.01. They both picked amounts which are very close to the true inflation. http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/
Questions about inflation aside, I’m confused as to why the Women’s Centre knew this was coming when NSPIRG had no idea. I thought they had volunteers everywhere, and full time staff in the building?
@Ben Wedge
The PIRG number I quoted was per semester, by the way.
One small thing I find misleading:
NSPIRG says they want to increase their fee to account for inflation and point out that it is very near $1.00. There are probably some good arguments to support the merit of this. One change is PT students never had to pay this levy before. The $1 increase is also on part-time students so using the inflation argument exclusively is misleading.
Inflation on $0 is … $0.
Math’d.
Question: How is the DWC levy of $0.79 going to work? Back in 2007 when DalOUT wanted to ask for a $0.50 levy, it was explained to us by then DSU President Ezra Edelstein that the University finance people only deal in round dollar figures and, thus, wouldn’t approve a levy of less than $1.00. (Remember, the University has final say on whether these levies are collected because they’re the ones to do the collecting.) Conveniently for us, WUSC was looking for a $0.50 increase to their levy at the same time, so we teamed up and ran one question for a $1.00 levy to be divided evenly between DalOUT and WUSC. We were happy and, presumably, the University would be happy. (The longer version of this story includes some unhappy students, which leads to me begrudgingly joining that newfangled Facebook contraption.)
I understand that the DWC had a $0.35 increase in 1998, but perhaps the University’s policy was different at that time, as I doubt Ezra would have lead us astray on this. Can anyone offer some insight or am I just pointing out yet another reason why the proper procedure for approving referendum questions should have been followed last night?
On a side note, as a former Councillor and someone who helped craft the current referendum procedures, I am disheartened about the procedural gaffs at last night’s meeting regarding the notice period for proposed questions, but as a pundit, I am so excited for so many referenda because while I may not know much about most of the candidates, I sure do know about referenda.
That’s going to be one really long ballot. The whereas clauses are required to be “brief”; constitution should set a word limit because clearly you all have a different definition of “brief” than I do.
I find that ratification clause in the ANSSA question weird… *all* referenda are subject to ratification by Council. Stating it explicitly seems redundant, and implies that the other questions are *not* subject to ratification, which is misleading.
Re: NSPIRG, I think that’s a new speed record for navigating the checks and balances designed to ensure that questions are well-worded and well-considered. … Which I suppose is why the question wording is so awkward.
Re: calculating inflation. The numbers used are more properly called the CONSUMER Price Index, which means using it as justification for an organization’s budget is rather strange, unless they intend to spend it all on salaries that are tied to CPI. CPI is calculated based on the change in price in a selection of goods commonly purchased by *consumers* (it includes things like gasoline, heating/electricity fuels, various groceries, shelter costs, tobacco). Organizations are not impacted by many of these increases. The actual increase in the goods and services purchased by either organization may increase faster or slower. I’m guessing they also used the Canada-wide CPI, but of course inflation in NS is notably slower than places like Alberta. I’d also add that asking for 22 years of inflation in one go is kind of strange… like the 2% this year is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Not that you needed anyone to tell you that the CPI justification is pretty weak… like all things, it boils down to “we want more money to do stuff”. It’s just nice to be upfront about that.
@Lisa Buchanan
That’s a great point: the $.35 increase worked because $.50 went to another group (the Sextant?) and the leftover $.15 went to the DSU general revenues.
So the $.79 increase in DWC funding will actually result in a fee increase of $1.00, the DSU will pocket the remaining $.21 per student. Assuming, of course, that the BoG agrees to raise fees by $1 when there was only a referendum on $.79.
Or maybe that rule is a thing of the past – Brian Mason is no longer the VP Finance, he was always the uptight one.
Jonsey, just to be sure I was asked about the state of the NSPIRG books by Senator McGill (to which I replied a full account) before I had the opportunity to speak for myself. The reason I spoke so early to the other motions earlier was I had either moved or 2nd the motions and was high up on the speaker’s list.
@Price more not less
Thanks Evan. Perhaps, if you’re so inclined, you would elaborate on your VP(FO) opinion on all the societies’ books here?
@Ben Wedge Chris Saulnier emailed the DWC is my understanding. That is why they knew and NSPIRG did not.
@Ryan Robski NSPIRG’s original question should have included part-time students, but that fee has not historically been collected.
@Lisa Buchanan People seemed to be concerned that the process was not followed, but not that the DSU has not followed its regulation that all referenda questions should be posted 5 days before the start of the nomination period or campaign registration period. Selective application of governing documents is problematic.
@Kaley
Aha! I thought that was a rule, but I couldn’t find it in the constitution. The fact that someone else thought it was a rule spurred me to look again. It’s in a weird place: Section 9, sub b.iii), paragraph b. There’s another major timeline problem that Lisa was referring to, I think, but I won’t give it away; she knows I know
. It should be noted there is a “letter of the law” way to obviate these problems fairly trivially.
I don’t think anyone wants to selectively apply governing documents. I think NSPIRG is getting more attention because their violations were the most egregious, both in terms of the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Multiple wrongs, however, do not make anyone right.
To me, the other key distinction is that the 5-day notice requirement is in the section describing the CROs duties. If she didn’t do it (which I assume she didn’t, through no fault of her own whatsoever) it doesn’t invalidate the referendum. One individual’s failure to execute their duty (regardless of whose fault it is) cannot and should not be sufficient grounds to overturn a referendum. It’s important, but it doesn’t have the same weight to me as something describing the obligation of the entire Council to its constituents, as the Notice of Motion section does.
Would be interesting to see someone refer this to the Judicial Board only because to my knowledge they have not met all year…
As previously stated by me in council the books for the societies up for referendum are all in fine order or will be shortly. NSPIRG had a few attempts to get their audit passed and made good on the follow up attmept. DASSS had some issues in the fall but are on their way to being in order and passing the Winter review. If their were an award for most improved books it would undoubtedly be the DWC, amazing work ladies!!
As for the whirl wind pace at which things are being rushed through council and deadlines being squeezed into nothingness, I’ll quote the lovely Victoria on this “Council has let slip all kinds of policies so why would we grow a spine now?” Now this quote was uttered as she passed a motion which for the first time ever stripped away the direct right to vote for some 13,000 students for this year only and did so in a minimum of quorum and with only one vote to the majority (9,8).
There is an ever quickening pace at which we are willing to disregard the processes put in place to govern our actions and it is being guided by the hand of Niccolo Machiavelli himself, or at least being justified by his ideas. These abuses are being too easily used to further the benefits of a very few and done so to the weakening of a very many, but the votes were counted and the debates closed, motions tabeled for ever??? so I guess I’ll go back to my spread sheets…
@in the bag…
Is this talking about making the graduate senator directly elected by grad students?
Either way, I can’t -wait- for her response to this. Brb, popcorn.
@in the bag…
A little background may be needed for my response to Evan (aka “in the bag”) to make sense.
The CRO asked for clarification on who exactly was to vote for the Graduate Student Senator. This conversation included DAGS (Dalhousie Association of Graduate Students) members on the DSU Council. We then decided to put forward the following motion at the January 11th meeting:
WHEREAS the DSU governing documents are ambiguous about what constituency(ies) should be entitled to vote for the Graduate Senator;
WHEREAS the Graduate Senator is meant to represent graduate student issues;
BIRT DSU Council will direct the CRO that only graduate students be entitled to vote for the Graduate Senator in the DSU elections 2012
During the debate on the motion, Council was asked if they wanted notice. Council said no. Council was then asked to table the debate. Council said no. Council was asked to approve the motion giving direction to the CRO. Council said yes.
At the next Council meeting (January 25) the motion was brought back to be reconsidered. This motion to reconsider was tabled indefinitely by Council. Therefore, for this election, only graduate students will be able to elect their graduate student senate representative.
This motion is in the spirit of how the DSU has structured representative democracy at Council. The Constitution specifies that only certain constituencies can elect their representatives such as only arts students electing the arts student rep. Only black students elect their representative. Only the women’s community elects the women’s rep. Council is constructed so that those who represent a specific constituency are only elected by that constituency. See Bylaw IV section 4. It only makes sense that a position specified to represent grad students should be voted for only by them.
As for your other comments:
Council grew a spine for the January 11th meeting and promptly lost it in time for the January 25th meeting.
You complain about a minimum of quorum but when we discussed that in relation to allowing Council in the summer to make decisions you didn’t care that quorum may just barely be met but that they should be allowed to make decisions as long as they meet quorum. It will not serve you well to say one thing about quorum and then disagree with yourself later in the meeting. Further, the Chair deemed only a basic majority was needed for the grad student senator motion which was achieved. If you don’t like that, go and change the whole system. But until then, you’re stuck living with it.
I’m not entirely certain what kind of math deems 23% of Dalhousie students (the percentage graduate students are of the student body) “a very few”.
There is a difference between disregarding the process and knowing it enough to use it to your advantage.
Finally, if you were calling me Machiavelli and meaning it as an insult, man have you read me wrong! He is one of my biggest political idols and being compared to him is one of the best compliments you could ever have paid me.
You have lost not once, not twice, but FOUR times on this issue (five if you include that Council voted in favour of the constitutional amendment where DAGS will appoint the Graduate Student Senator and send them to the DSU). The smell of sour grapes is starting to reek.
You know that little quip about having lost 4 times means that there is a loosing side to the student population on this one. In fact 13,000 losers on this one. The fact that you so gleefully delight in having lorded over them in a feat of gamesmanship for the slight benefit of a very few while weakening an entire union is saddening. And I guess I hit the nail on the head with the philosophical assessment. When only a few win we all lose, and especially in a year when the DSU has tried to do so much together.
@Ryan Robski
It’s not unusual that the Judicial Board has “not met all year.” They do not typically meet unless approached with a challenge of some kind (I’d hazard a guess that the majority of disputes they are asked to resolve are related to the outcome of elections) or a reference question, such as the reference question surrounding the admittance of King’s students to DSU AGMs in 2009 (see our archives for more info.)
@jonesy
As I alluded to on Twitter and now that I’ve read the wording of the motion re. graduate student representation on the Senate, I take issue with the use of the phrase “the [singular] Graduate Senate Representative.” The Constitution, as worded, does not preclude multiple Graduate Senate Representatives:
By-Law IV
2. Council shall include the following people, who must be members of the Union at the
time of their election and during their term in office, and who shall be elected by the
membership: [...]
(f) four (4) student members of the Senate, at least one of whom shall be a graduate
student.
Key words here that lead me to see two flaws in the wording of the motion are “shall be elected by the membership” and “at least one.” I see what you’re getting at with the spirit of the representative constituency nature of Council, but “membership” is clearly defined as “all members of the Union.” That is about as far from “ambiguous” as you can get and (you went to law school, you know this) the strong wording of “shall” reinforces the point. So, unless you can point me to a section of the constitution that muddies these waters, I’m not convinced.
I don’t have an issue with grad students electing their Senate Representative(s) if that’s what they want, and I see that there is a constitutional amendment headed for the AGM, I can’t help wondering how grad students feel about the fact that the motion (and the constitutional amendment if I’m reading you right further down in your comments) limits them to one rep when the constitution implies they could have all four if that’s the way the vote were to go. If it were me, I’d have avoided this motion and just worked on a constitutional amendment. While I was at it, I might have argued that professional students should also have dedicated representation on the Senate.
On a more minor note, I can’t speak for all the “community” rep positions on Council, but I should point out that the LGBTQ Community Representative is elected by not only LGBTQ students. The DalOUT constitution entitles any member of the DSU to vote for the DalOUT executive, which includes the DSU rep. So, technically, the constituency of the LGBTQ rep is the entire membership of the union. And you know what that means…Dreams count.
@Snowcow
You might want to get another bag of popcorn.
There are enough Ghosts of DSU Past around that “for the first time ever” is a pretty dangerous phrase.
The graduate senate seat was created in 2002 as an added student seat to Council, with the full support of the Senate. The Senate constitution now requires that the student be selected by the DSU, it is not specific as to how.
For the first few years, the seat was quietly selected by DAGS (no election), usually they sent their president or a VP. Then at the McGrath-Hill summits (which convened graduate students from a broad base to discuss how the DSU might better represent them), it was pointed out that DAGS did not represent all graduate students, and perhaps the process should be open to other constituencies. For the first year the Recruitment committee filled the position using their process, including an email to all graduate students. After that, the position was moved on to the DSU ballot. The agreement in the summit was that graduate students only would vote for the position. For a mix of reasons – the difficulty of getting a list of all graduate students from the Registrar, several of the points Lisa made above, and other points I haven’t heard made yet – when this was implemented, all students were able to vote for the position.
So it’s not the first time ever undergraduate students haven’t had a voice in choosing the graduate senator – in fact, they have not had a voice throughout much of the position’s brief history.
That said, I too would prefer to see undergraduate students voting for the position, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into at the moment.
I also would have ruled the motion procedurally invalid. I, like Lisa, disagree entirely with the first whereas clause: the constitution is not at all ambiguous. It doesn’t explicitly name a constituency, but it doesn’t for any of the positions on the list under the heading “Members of Council elected by membership”. I would also add that disagreements about interpretation of the Constitution would ordinarily be referred to the Judicial Board.
So in essence, the Council has passed a motion contradicting a By-Law, a step which is both procedurally invalid and sets a terrible precedent.
[Edited after seeing Lisa's post]
@Lisa Buchanan
After all this popcorn, I’m stuffed!
That’s the problem with you kids these days. You’re all about the radical reforms and the Obama-style change, but you have no appreciation for the rules. When I was your age, I read the constitution cover to cover, uphill both ways! Believe me, if you ever read that thing, it IS uphill both ways – and this is after we fixed a bunch of the problems with it.
Side note: I’m about 99.33% (repeating, of course) sure that the constitution on the DSU website is not the correct version. Mainly because there is an election bylaw, and I specifically recall slashing and burning that one. On the other hand, if it IS the correct version, well crap, you’ve got a whole other list of problems. Then again, I’m not sure anyone ever resolved the half-approved constitution fiasco of 2010, when we went bylaw by bylaw in approving them and lost quorum halfway through (ah, nostalgia for the Zimmerman Administration). I’m pretty sure this means that if we were following the official letter of the constitution, the Executive wouldn’t actually have responsibilities.
I also disagree with Lisa on a couple of points. First, there is no reason why directly electing a graduate Senator should preclude graduate students from running for the other Senate seats. And anyone who would try to prevent them from doing so would be ignoring 1) the fact that they have enough time trying to get one candidate to run for the seat, let alone two, let alone two successfully, and 2) graduate students actually have been undergrads before. Often recently. It’s a lot easier for a grad student to relate to undergrads than the other way around, where I’ve encountered very, very few undergrads who fully understand how grad studies works.
Also, a Senate seat for professional students is a bad idea for three reasons. First, “professional” is weakly defined. Do engineers count? What about MBAs? MPAs? Why and why not?
Second, the group doesn’t really have all that much in common, from a purely academic standpoint. What exactly do law students and dental students have in common (again, purely academically) that is different from, for example, undergrads? The whole nature of research and thesis-based studies and supervisors and the graduate experience is something very different from undergraduate studies and, while different in every field, has enough common threads to make it make sense (in my humble opinion).
Finally, we only get 4 seats. I actually like the idea of having a senator for every faculty, rather than just those 4, but that’s something to take up with the university, not the DSU. Conveniently, grad students make up close to a quarter of the student population. Sorry, professional students, you’re outnumbered. And on top of that, the absence of that grad student voice would be felt both by students and the Senate itself (they explicitly REQUIRE the grad senator to sit on a number of committees).
With all of that said, if a professional student wants to sit on the Senate, they should just run. Half of the time, they’re yes/no votes anyway (even though I had the misfortune to run TWICE in contested years…).
Note that most of this has nothing to do with who votes for the grad Senator. I wanted to make sure my comment wasn’t too relevant.
Well Well Well, it would apear that the directive passed by council will go unused as there is no application for Grad Senate Rep in this election….Now to go back and strike this from the record so we can get this terrrrible precedent off our books. Oh fruitless efforts, where art thou…
@Mike Smit
Basically, thanks to salary-heavy staff budgets (NSPIRG was spending over half on staff salaries if I recall, and DWC had a 90% figure mentioned above?!?), CPI actually is a pretty decent measure. Inflation erodes the ability of levied organizations to fulfill their mandates pretty quick, and then they’re left looking like DSU largess.
Back when Stop NSPIRG was active, I recall advocating for a three tier ballot for all levies, to be put up for automatic periodic referendums:
1. Increase the levy to match the CPI since the last referendum.
2. Leave the levy as it is.
3. Cancel the levy entirely.
Good to see they got 1 and 2 down at least…
@John Doucette
Nice to see you back.
I was careful to include the caveat that if salary was the dominant expense, it’s a more reasonable measure. I didn’t know the numbers offhand. If in fact the levy will be spent on increasing salaries by 50%, then it is a more reasonable measure. Of course that gives rise to a new set of questions. It seems more likely to me that the money would be used to restore funding to some areas that had been cutback to make room for salary increases. NSPIRG has only been forced to publish a budget relatively recently, so that would be difficult to assess.
@Mike Smit
Thanks, was at a conference for the last week, with rather poor net access.
I actually suspect a good chunk of that money will go to salary increases. When we had the Stop NSPIRG campaign going, the folks from NSPIRG were always complaining about how low their staff salaries were (and by the standards of a conventional job, they are!).