[Chicago1st]

I also have worked with a planning committee here for a bit and I'll say I've been troubled by two main things in FIRST the past couple years, the financials of FIRST as being discussed here and some issues with the FLL - FTC programs, but that's another issue.
My problem with the financials is if you look back to when FIRST had a $3 Million Cash reserve (which I think all agree is prudent), they raised the FRC registration fee $1,000 per team. They had about 1000 teams then, and about 1500 now. The cash reserve went up about a milion a few years ago, and about 1.4 million last year.

It bothers me that the registration fee increase has generated about an extra $1-1.4 million in revenue for FIRST each year and the cash reserve has gone up almost exactly the same amount each year. To me, the fee should go back down to $5,000 if the reserve is well over $5mil. I can see no justification for maintaining the increased fee when it clearly isn't needed anymore.