[EricH]

I'm almost inclined to agree with Cory and Jonathan. There are quite a few valid objections to the new structure. These have been raised already; therefore, I won't go into them.

There are also good reasons to make the change permanent and even more widespread. Again, these have been brought up already.

However, I would like to remind everyone that this is a PILOT. As such, it may fail. It will almost certainly lead to changes. It may succeed. We won't know until next April/May whether it worked; more importantly, whether it worked the way it was intended to. We can only observe how it goes and give FIRST feedback as spectators and participants. I'm going to give FIRST the benefit of the doubt on this one, because it's an experiment. But if it doesn't work out, then someone will need to figure up some other way of reducing costs and/or improving return; i.e. increasing the "value" (in this case, bang-for-the-buck) of FIRST.