8B. Provincial Life Membership Fees - Ilia Bluvshtein

This section is reserved for a policy discussion requested by Ontario Chess Association President Ilia Bluvshtein.

He has asked me to kick off this discussion with the following:

Life membership fees do not include a provincial portion. This approach contradicts to the fees for other membership categories that all have the provincial portion.

I would suggest establishing the provincial portion for Life membership fees. The provincial portion can be 20% of the corresponding CFC fees. This would be in line with the OCA Constitution that streamlines provincial fees as 20% of CFC fees for all membership categories.

Option 1 would be just to add 20% provincial Life membership fee to the existing CFC Life membership fees. This will result in the increase of total Life membership fees by 20%. Option 2 would be to keep current Life membership fees and allocate a portion to province. Say, if current Life membership fee = A, then new CFC Life membership = A/1.2 and the provincial Life membership = 0.2A/1.2; the total Life membership = A/1.2+0.2A/1.2 = A, which is the same as now.

Life membership fees go to Chess Foundation and somewhat disappear for current CFC members. I would think the provincial portion of Life membership needs to be returned to provinces to make use of it.

Ilia Bluvshtein

Wearing my "other hat" as Secretary of the BC Chess Federation I would like to note that as the result of a 2012 AGM resolution BC does not currently offer provincial life memberships. (Existing BCCF life memberships were to be honored)

The feeling of that meeting was that Life Memberships had somewhat gotten out of hand as there were (at that time - I haven't checked recently) 70 CFC life members in BC but only 25 BCCF life members. The proponents argued mostly along the same lines as Ilia.

I believe the setting of provincial membership fees including life memberships is provincial jurisdiction. Here in BC we do not have a problem with collecting provincial dues from CFC life members. Why is it a problem in Ontario? Are there any other provinces with this problem?

I am in favor of the OCA collecting Lifetime Memberships from CFC members residing in Ontario at the time they apply for Life Memberships. However I would not favor that it be returned directly to the Provincial Association. Instead i would prefer the monies be added to the Foundation pool, and based on the contribution levels have the benefits from that portion passed onto the province, as I currently done with the existing CFC model.

BTW, one open issue is how to deal with persons who move to a different province. For instance, I assume that someone that paid a lifetime Ontario membership would not be pleased now paying BC fees.

Well they would have to pay BC dues the same as if a USCF life member moved to BC.

All these points were made when we last visited this subject some 8-10 years ago. They're still valid.