2023 Expenses & 2024 Budget Questions
Noticed a couple line items that stood out reviewing 2023 Expenses and 2024 Budget. Would appreciate any insight the Board or fellow members can shed on this. Excel summary since 2018 below.
Expenses:
Legal Fees were more than the last 10+ years combined in 2023 and 3X higher than 2019 when the bylaws were updated from the 1990's. Next years budget calls for the similar spending. Is this the best use of our communities dollars? I can envision many other areas our community can utilize these dollars.
IT Expenses also appear to be exponentially higher. $10k budget in 2024 when average annual expense is typically less than $1500. No explaination in the notes. I know Marcel has donated a lot of time in the past... are we outsourcing now? That would be understandable but I'm not clear.
GA/ Audit - Budgeted for $5k in 2024 after spending $10k in 2023. Since we're using a 3rd party for accounting, is this still necessary annually?
Garbage/Recycling - I was surprised the increases from 2018-2023 represented some of the smallest dollar increases on the annual budget. I was under the impression that these costs were rising much higher based on the actions taken. 27% increase in garbage ($3029) since 2018 doesn't seem too out of line.
Pool Supplies + Power - I also found it interesting that pool expenses were highest in history in 2023 even with ammenity restrictions. Not sure that expenses warrant the property rights restrictions. Should we be talking about how to better schedule / systems for ammenity use vs. limit property rights? I think those solutions make more "cents" and can engage the community towards solving it together vs. having the board take all the heat for the direction. Lastly, it appears that the Rental Income was $27k less than budgeted and equal to 2022 in dollars. Are we seeing rentals return back to precovid levels? Based upon my experience this summer, we saw a lot less people in the rental properties when walking around. Current 2024 budget call for $76k or a 37% increase in income. With the reduction of rentals, this income estimate appears overly optimistic.
This year's IT budget includes a number of new expenses as well as increases in existing line items. There is zero budgeted outsourcing costs, all development effort is done internally via volunteers. There is a fair amount of effort related to IT within Snowline. Given new working dynamics, more and more business is conducted virtually. As a result, a fair amount of buildout has and needs to be done. We plan to extend the network via a point to multipoint bridge. This will allow us to extend wifi to the shop with the potential connecting the gate system to the Snowline network. Business email has been adopted for all Snowline mailboxes. Snowline has two ISPs - Ziply & Starlink with both being needed due to limitations of both. Snowline's website is WIX based and costing includes Wix subscription, Wix plugins, cloud storage, domain registrations. Snowline is moving to Quick Books Online to improve integration and automation.
Some additional equipment is also required. We will be adding a weather station to the clubhouse. We will be adding some IP video cameras integrated with the network. Equipment is needed to extend the network bridge to the Shop. This will provide wifi within the shop and potentially allow connection of the gate system to the overall network. Additional gear is needed virtual hosting of monthly board meetings as well as streaming of the AGM.
To recap, there is zero outsourcing costs. All development effort is done via volunteers. This includes all network design / deployment as well as all website development. A significant upcoming development effort will be the creation of a membership database.
Below is a list of top ticket items.
Business email: $1,200
ISP (Ziply & Starlink): $3,200
Website (hosting, plugins, domain, cloud storage): $1,500
Quick Books Online: $1,200
Weather Station: $750
Network gear: $1,000
IP Cameras (5): $1,000
Video storage: $350
Board room / AGM Zoom gear: $600
Total: $10,800
Unexpected: $1,200 ($600 gear/sw, $50 / month subscription)
Total: $12,000
From a categorization standpoint, these costs can be categorized into two groups: annual run rate costs, one time costs.
The annual / monthly subscriptions are annual recurring costs. These for the majority of the costs and include:
Email
Website
ISP
Quick Books Online
Total: $7,200
Note, if we are able to reliably move to one of the two ISPs, we could eliminate the second ISP, but right now that's not feasible.
The one time costs are mostly for equipment and include:
Weather station
Network gear
IP cameras & local storage
Board room / AGM gear
Total: $3,700
Coming out of this next year, I would only expect periodic equipment upgrades as needed.
I would expect next year's IT budget to drop down to $8,000
I agree with the feedback; given the significant increase in costing, I should have provided context on the increase and included a breakout of the line item. This is on me and apologies.
Also, apologies on the delay in responding, squeezing this in between work and life.