The reasoning back at the time (which seemed to have no logic IMO) was that we needed as many formal NZIHF and SIHL members as possible for funding purposes. However AFAIK there are no funding organisations which require information about how many official NZIHF/SIHL members we have anyway, they just care about the total number.

IMO, there should be a flat fee, then the NZIHF/SIHL fees should be paid by the club for those members who need it. That way players aren’t discouraged from competing at a higher level, particularly if it is only for a game or two (imagine if your team needed one extra player for a game and you had to expect that player to cough up an extra ~$50 just for the privledge – it aint gonna happen). It wouldn’t cost the club a cent as they’d just bump the fees up a notch to compensate and the only people who would miss out are those who aren’t playing in NZIHF sanctioned events (but they’re presumably already paying that anyway if they’re expected to pay full fees).

From what I’ve heard through the grapevine, Queenstown, Alexandra, Gore and Maniototo don’t force their members to pay NZIHF and SIHL fees. I’m not sure about the AIHA, Christchurch SNC or CIHA.

I should note, we’re not unusual.

Here is Auckland’s registration. Coincidentally they’re very similar – their youth registration is $10 less, but their practice costs are quite a bit more (I presume their ice is more expensive).

Canterbury Ice Hockey Association web site seems to be horrendously out of date, so I’m not sure how much they charge.

I agree with most of what Aaron has just outlined. The club can bring in the same amount of money in total without charging people a huge upfront fee like this. Just bump up the cost for ice time and you can cover it all but have it spread throughout the year, not in one big lump that you need to pay regardless of how often you use it or whether you can afford in one giant lump like that.

What happens if I start playing in September? Do I need to pay full registration despite only playing for a month or two at the end of the year? It all seems rather silly to me. I’ve never really liked this way of doing things. For organisations like the CIHA it makes sense to hike up prices, they already have too many members as it is so they can afford to weed out the unserious ones, the DIHA is not in this situation.

I remember the DIHL got butchered in numbers a year or so because of this. The DIHL A-grade had four teams and B-grade 6 teams. However we actually had enough players for 10 teams we just overloaded the B-grade and then started turning players away. However the next season the numbers plummeted as soon as the fees were hiked up and the league was down to 8 teams, some of which were very lean on players and that was with a much lower upfront cost than this most recent one (I think). It wasn’t that the fees couldnt be higher, it’s just that there is a whole extra lump of cash someone needs to play to compete for a brief period of time, particularly if it isn’t clear what they’ll get for their money which is the case at the moment.

The cost to play one season of DIHL would be more than I have ever paid (per game) to compete in a hockey league ever. $170 for seven games is far too steep IMO, that’s +$24/game. That includes the Christchurch SNC, Christchurch inline hockey interclub league and two different leagues in Canada.

People who paid DIHL only last year paid $50, not $15. It’s been a couple of years since the club allowed players to only pay associate membership. It’s not at all what associate membership is for, associate membership is for people who never step on the ice, but who need to be members in order to fulfil their roles – Joyce, Jackie, Stephen etc. It was a thing we did for half a season and then the club rightly said that they needed to be full members. Full membership last year was $75 for seniors, $50 for juniors, if you played SIHL.

Note, there was no price difference for SIHL/DIHL if you were a junior, only seniors paid more money in order to sign up for SIHL.

There was no ability to warn people before the meeting that the membership levy would be changing, as the figures were only discussed at the meeting. I had asked if the committee meeting 3 weeks before could make a recommendation to the AGM so people would have notice, but that was turned down, as this is apparently the way it has always been done.

Lots of what you guys are saying are very valid arguments which should have been raised at the AGM, however they weren’t, because the people making them now weren’t at the AGM. Can I again suggest, if you want some control over how the club is run, how much it charges etc, you turn up at the AGM, or if you can’t be there, give your vote to someone who will be there. It’s not an unimportant meeting, as your interest in the decisions made are now evidence of. This wasn’t done in secret, everyone knows that the AGM sets the registration fee, but it was set by those people that turned up. If more people for whom $100 was a problem were there, it might not have got set to $100.

Lastly, we hope to hold the next AGM (we changed our year so the AGM is now to be held at the end of the season, not the beginning of the next one) just before the end of year breakup and prizegiving. That way people will be encouraged to be there because they’d just have to turn up an hour or so early for an event that most people come to anyway. It’s a question of whether we can have the social late enough that means the audited accounts are ready.

Second lastly, it would be my intention for the committee to present a proposed budget to the AGM, which outlines the proposed costs for the upcoming year, and the sources of that money, including registration. As far as I know the club has never done this. As much as it sounds simple to do a budget, it will be tricky because 1. We’ve never done one before, so there will be a fair bit of guesswork involved; 2. The club actually has numerous cost centres, a lot of which are changing quite a lot – previously we invested virtually nothing in coaching and officials, now they are areas that the club is spending money on, and 3. There are a lot of variables that change year to year – local competition length and size, number of people in the various grades, professional coaching, successful grant applications, etc.