[Bob Steele]

In order to reduce the amount of money that a given team needs to pay to FIRSTWA they have to apply for a FIRST WA grant. This grant application process just opened a couple of days ago and no one will know what their individual responsibility will be. We were told to have a PO for $10,642 ready to go at a webinar 2 weeks ago. None of us know what we are supposed to pay as of yet.

This is also complicated by another grant from OSPI (Washington Office of the Superintendent of Instruction) which teams have also had to apply for. This is money from the legislature for FIRST programs. Unlike previous years, where this money came to teams directly and could be spent on whatever the team had budgeted in the grant, evidently now this money will affect how much your individual team will be charged for registration. In effect this means that if you got a big OSPI grant, you will be expected to pay more to FIRST WA with the extra amount coming from this grant. OSPI grants for rookie teams are targeted at $12,000 with veteran teams eligible for up to $7000. This initially sounded great until we found out that this increase in grants will just be tacked onto our registration fees.

In the end it is a good plan... it's just difficult to say now exactly what any of us will end up paying.

Everyone needs to remember that what PNW is trying to do is to figure out what it costs to do everything... including the costs of Districts and District championship and divide that cost among teams.

The reasoning is that financial supporters of FIRST would rather give money to teams than to some nebulous "District Cost" or "Championship Cost"

In this way teams all have their share in the costs of the District expenses including the cost to put on events, the cost of paid employees, and the building and storage costs. Businesses that contribute have their money given to teams as "grants" to cover the team's share.

Many teams don't realize that for Regionals, regional committees have to come up with all of the costs of the regional... registration money does not go towards those costs. FIRST does provide some of the amenities,, (field, FTA, etc) but the bulk of the costs have to be raised locally by those regional committees....

FIRSTWA is attempting to give an accounting of costs so teams see what is going on and what is being spent on teams. I think we all have been looking for this kind of transparency. It may take some time for it all to shake out but at least teams have most of the full story.

Of course the rest of the story is where does the "licensing fee" or whatever they call it, that goes to FIRST go? The District can't help with that transparency.