Aliasi,
I see your points and I mostly agree.
First, I think you are absolutely right on the importance of the events and the event budget. Events are good expenditures -- especially if they attract new people to our sims, invigorate the spirit of current citizens, or provide a cultural center and definition for the CDS. I think that, at their best, they do all of these things. We need to make sure that we do events right so that they do all those things, and I don't think we can do them right if we starve them by stripping away their budgets.
I also agree that, to the extent we need to hire talent for our events, we need to either pay market rate or rely on the native talent of people with the good will to volunteer. I would hope that CDS citizens would have enough public spirit to perform for a reduced rate (say 50% of the usual rate), and, other things being equal, I would favor hiring such public spirited citizens.
Stipends for governmental officers are a little different. I would be fine with allowing service instead of tier. However, given that some citizens own multiple parcels, and other citizens own more or less expensive single parcels, I would prefer to set a governmental stipend, if we have one, at the monthly average tier for all lots in the CDS.
That said, unlike events, I would rather see our public offices filled without stipend, out of a spirit of public service. If people need more motivation, I would rather engage in public recognition rather than stipends. In real life, politicians are often recognized by having their names associated with buildings, project, events, or activities. That has been the case for all of history -- back to early Greece. I would rather go in that direction.
Trebor --
I would consider 1% to be significant. Any money spent on stipends for officials is money we cannot spend on events, outreach, expansion, building upgrades, etc. I would rather reward our public servants differently -- off budget.
However, to give this analytical weight, I will consider your proposed budget AFTER removing linden tier. (That is, not as percent of total budget, but as percent of discretionary budget.) I see that we would pay government officials nearly 1/4 of our discretionary budget. We would pay them a total of more than half of our event budget -- and more than twice what we spend on major festivals. I would rather abolish pay for officials and add two more major festivals.
We also are not really setting aside funds for expansion or reconstruction, and we need to be. When that is considered, I don't see that we are making a profit at all. Rather, I see that we are reserving less than 10% for expansion and redevelopment. I would rather see that number be 15% or even 20%.
That said, I can understand that our tier might be difficult for some people -- either because of their rl finances or because they have restrictions funding their SL account and have no inworld income. Rather than provide stipends indiscriminately to government officials, I would rather provide tier waivers to citizens with demonstrable need -- a CDS version of social housing, if you will.
Beathan
Let's keep things simple enough to be fair, substantive enough to be effective, and insightful enough to be good.