need more dialogue needed between staff and community on specific funding requests & URS summits raise significant red flags

[Robin Gross <robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Despite the publication of the draft budget, there remains enormous confusion 
about what community funding requests have been approved and what have not been 
approved.   

While it appears the request from the NCSG Executive Community for travel 
support was "approved" in the budget, the details provided in the notes of the 
appendix only provides travel support to constituencies.  This needs to 
clarified and corrected to include the NCSG - who made the request for SG 
business at the ICANN meetings.  The controller indicated on the community call 
it would be clarified to include NCSG in this community request for leadership 
travel support so I will be looking for that clarification in the revised draft.

Also, NCUC's request for support for its outreach and educational program it is 
planning for Toronto says "approved" in the draft budget, but it is not clear 
if staff intends to support NCUC's event in Toronto in October or if staff is 
planning its own separate meeting.  These unanswered questions make planning 
impossible.

It would be helpful if staff would provide a detailed explanation of what it 
has in mind when it says it has approved funding outreach, materials, capacity 
building, etc. in the notes and how NCSG can guide staff's implementation of 
these provisions so they match something the community actually needs.  The 
"details" provided in the notes of the appendix to the budget are sketchy, 
contradictory, do not match requests that say "approved", and increase the 
confusion and disappointment from community members.  So it would be helpful if 
staff would provide some detailed written documentation that specifically 
responds to community requests, followed-up with a telephone call to answer any 
further questions (as I hoped the earlier community calls would provide these 
clarifications) on these community requests.

I am also concerned about staff's plan to re-write the URS with the "summits" 
it has proposed in the budget.  The URS was approved as a community consensus 
recommendation with all stakeholders having to give a little.  Giving the 
intellectual property constituency yet another bite at the apple to re-write 
the rules as it would like as these URS summits appear to do upends the entire 
multi-stakeholder process and calls ICANN's legitimacy into question (at a time 
when it cannot afford further mis-steps).   Those rules were a tapestry of 
community consensus with carefully crafted negotiations among stakeholders that 
will tossed aside by a URS summit dominated by the trademark industry (as it 
most certainly will, since no one else will have funds to participate).  Didn't 
ICANN learn anything from the disaster of the IRT experience?  Let's not 
duplicate it with this URS summit maneuver.   ICANN should look for dispute 
resolution providers who can do the job required - rather than change the job 
to meet the providers profit expectations. 

Thank you,
Robin Gross