[VOTE] 16k € budget for in-person team meeting in Munich in June

Hello,

based on Budget request: In-person team meeting in Munich in June, I would like to ask the board to

  • approve a budget of 16.000 € for the in-person team meeting in Munich in June
  • it consists of 15.000 € for travel and hotel, plus 1.000 € for an optional team building activity

The vote runs 72h from now.

Thanks for your support,
Florian

I abstain.
Thanks Florian for running the vote.

Hi Florian,

I vote in favor of this request.

Thanks!

Best,
Eliane

I abstain, as a member of the team involved in the meeting

Hi Florian,

I approve reserving budget for the activities requested.

As for actually spending from that budget, the usual care should be taken with regards to e.g. tax implications. For example, this article (german) found with a quick search suggest to me as a layman that employers should limit themselves to 110 Euro per attending employee for events, otherwise things get complicated.

Best Regards,

Bjoern

I also support this budget request as long as the tax concern is considered.

S.

I support the budget.

Paolo

Hi all,

I wouldn’t expect members of the board raising concerns in public and approving that corresponding budget item without clarifying the concerns and resolve it before.

Such behavior maybe classified as negligence or worse.

And in addition it could also be dangerous for TDF in total.

Regards,
Andreas

Supporting the budget.
Eike

Hi y’all,

in general, I would expect TDF members with genuine concerns of the legal kind, to bring those up in private with the board. If that does not elicit a satisfactory outcome, then this should be taken to the private members list. The current habit of hobby-lawyering on public lists is ill-advised.

Best, Thorsten

Hi all,

It’s recommend for a member of the board to clarify concerns before her/his vote!

Regards,
Andreas

The Board of Directors at the time of voting consists of 7 seat holders (not including deputies). In order to be quorate, the vote needs to have 1/2 or more of the Board of Directors members, which gives 4.

A total of 5 Board of Directors members have participated in the vote.

The vote is quorate.

A quorum could be reached with a simple majority of 3 votes.

Result of vote:
3 approvals: Eliane, Björn, Simon
2 abstain: Sophie, Italo
0 disapprovals
Decision: The proposal has been accepted.

Board member Eike supports the motion as well.
Deputy Paolo supports the motion as well.

Thanks a lot everyone for supporting the budget! The team is very happy to meet in person again.

Regarding the concerns I will, of course, check the expenses with the tax advisor.

Just to avoid confusion about the nature of the request, let me clarify one thing: What is planned is a work meeting. It is not a company trip or a social event.

With the budget, TDF covers:

  • 2nd class travel preferably via train
  • a regular hotel (I think ours even has no star rating)
  • the venue (which is operated by a local, donation-funded association and is not a regular congress center)

We host the meeting in Munich every year to cut down travel costs, as we have six team members who live near or in Munich.

TDF does not cover lunch, dinner, snacks or drinks, nor celebrations, presents or work jubilees.

I will have a look at the team building event, and if that turns out to create concerns for the board, we can drop the idea.

Hi @floeff , Hi @andreasma ,

Thanks, now that I resigned, I finally found time to get back to this:

If I understand the referenced document correctly, for events there is a limit
of 110 EUR per attending employee. For 9 employees that approx. matches the requested 1000 EUR. So this should only be relevant if there will be fewer attendees.

However, while checking this, I came across hints that the request for 160 EUR per person per night for hotel rooms, which seems a lot – esp. some team members live in Munich. A “reasonable” hotel cost per night per person seems to be 70 EUR. But a “a regular hotel” with “no star rating” should be well in that range, so thank you @floeff for taking care.

@floeff, however with ~half the team close to Munich and “2nd class travel preferable by train”, 722 EUR per head seems quite a lot. Did I overlook something?

Best Regards,

Bjoern