Why would we ever want to switch to Floating Crown?

I would like to throw in my thoughts on this by stating first and foremost that I am not from Goldenvale. I have flourished here, made many good friends here, received my Masterhood here, and am a Knight of this Kingdom. And though I am a citizen, and it is where I have placed my heart and allegiance, I can still state that as absolute fact.
Before moving here, I had never heard of the concept of a static crown. The situation was rather shocking to me, but that's how my new Kingdom was, so I accepted it, because surely at one pint it was the natural and sensical thing to do.

I would like to point out that, being originally from a floating crown kingdom, that anyone with ideas that a floating crown will garner more visits for your park by the Monarchy, or that communication will be much better, will be sorely disappointed when and if the changeover occurs.

People romanticize that which they do not have but dearly hope for. Goldenvale Proper is the microcosm of the kingdom as a whole, and therefore its people will deal with things in pretty much the same way, just on a grander scale.

For me, though, floating crown is still the way to go. I fully support it. I feel uneasy being what I consider to be a privileged member of Goldenvale. I will make no claim and will adamantly refute anyone who would go so far as to say that they possess insight, wisdom, and ability of leadership that others, clearly, do not. Living and playing in Nashua, NH does not and should not grant us special powers. Foregoing the ability to run for any office (which is in my mind the least of my concerns) I cannot accept the idea of continuing down a path where our people are denied a voice. When we say we are the Mighty Kingdom of Goldenvale, we generally accept that to mean ALL of our populace and not just the twenty or so that manage to make it out at GVP. Twenty people do not make our events fun. Twenty people do not create friendships spanning across two countries. Twenty people, in short, do not a real kingdom worth regarding make. Traditions fade, and just as all things must eventually pass due to necessity, so to must we turn our eyes towards the new face of our organization.

However, it does present its own set of issues.

First, the Kingdom officers may not reside within a principality in a floating crown model, which automatically restricts the crown land borders.

Second, the Kingdom seat is in Nashua, NH. It is the place where the first monarch held office and is, for all intents and purposes, the center of a radius that we must set for ourselves. While I believe that all members of the Kingdom should be able to vote in officer elections, I do not think that we should extend running for office across such a wide-range. Were I an Amtgarder in New York, I would be more inclined to be working toward forming a principality as your groups are close enough and numerous enough that a strong case could be made for an eventual Kingdom. This limitation would likely result in the insurgence of more parks popping up in the New England area, which could both strengthen the Kingdom of Goldenvale AND help our subgroups reach their greatest potential.

The Goldenvale Corpora would need to be accepted across the board. Attendance requirements, qualification scoring and criteria, passing scores for various tournaments and whatnot, and voting eligibility would all most definitely need to be exactly the same, save for a principality who is at leave to create and maintain their own corpora. This would also be the same for Althings and Kingdom elections.

Essentially what I would like to see is a modified floating-crown Kingdom with a clear set of boundaries that allows voting privileges for all members but restricts to a crown-land radius modeled after a handful of other Kingdoms in Amtgard.

There is a benefit to the Goldenvale Proper park - You get a set of officers to deal with local issues and another set of officers who can handle Kingdom issues. No longer does your local set of officers have to be distracted with Kingdom-wide business.

Most of us from Bitter Coast expect it will be a modified floating crown. It wouldn't be feasible for most of us to run for office and even if we went full floating crown I doubt we'd be elected as the rest of the Kingdom would probably be suspicious of our ability to travel. You could even leave that part of it in the hands of the voters. Just a thought.

The Northern Empire is designed to someday grow up to be a floating crown kingdom. Built into our corpora is a "core lands model". You have the be in a group in a certain range to be considered a "core land" and therefore able to run for Imperial office. Any far reaching groups, of which we currently have none but someday could theoretically have, would not be considered core lands and therefore unable to run to Imperial Office.

Would it be possible for us (Bitter Coast) to eventually join the NY principality however? Two of the officers in NYC/Empire's Grove were former Bitter Coast members (one went to Arrantor), and a number of us have been visiting NY groups over the years. 

I think it's interesting that multiple people that are originally from floating crown kingdoms have said that it does not increase the number of times that Kingdom level officers visit all of the kingdom's parks. I've never been a part of such a system, so perhaps they're right. But it seems to me that if a member of Haranshire was a Kingdom officer they'd be at my park almost every week, instead of the two or three times a year that it seems to happen currently. And Caradoc, TRP, Blightstone, etc. would most likely see that person much more often as well, since it's a lot easier to visit for the day when a park is an hour away as opposed to 5-6 hours. Maybe that wouldn't happen though.

At this point there really isn't even talk of a NY principality going on, so I doubt it'll happen within the next couple of years. When Julian first brought up the idea more than a year ago there was conversation for a few months and then nothing. Every once in a while someone mentions it and there's a couple days of ideas, but no one seems to really be willing to buck up and do anything. I'd love to do more, but with school, work, trying to keep my own park together, and the four or five other organizations that I have leadership responsibilities to it just isn't in my schedule at the moment without quite a bit of external support. I've heard a lot of people from the Crown Lands talk about how they'd love to have NY form a principality, but I have never seen any of them actually do anything to get that moving. If you all expect this to be a grassroots effort, it probably won't happen because the large majority of New Yorkers seem to be pretty satisfied with the current system.

There's an active facebook group, that's been active since the weekend Julian brought it up (You're a member of it too, actually). The current 'plan of attack' is an event to be held mid-summer 2014, to see what kind of turn-out and efforts an all-NY event would bring it, both from within NY as well as interest from other parts of Amtgard.