Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: lenders & bylaws

[Hungerford, David (dghungerford]

on 6/20 Rob wrote:
>How you choose to govern your community is up to you.  It doesn't have 
>to be in the bylaws that the banks see, in order for it to be group 
>policy . . .  So in our bylaws it says 
>2/3rds majority vote.  This is our fall back.  Internally we make our 
>decisions by consensus. Since this includes 3/4 majority its OK.  We 
>have defined our consensus process in our house rules. The bank never 
>sees these.

We have the same absurd situation in Muir Commons. Once a year the "board" 
(one board member from each household) "elects" with "at least a 2/3 vote" 
at a meeting with a "quorum" our "president, vp, sec, treas."  I think I'm 
still vp, although I'm not sure because I missed that meeting last January.  
We do it, but we pay no attention to it at all in terms of how we run our 
community.  For convenience' sake, we elect to "official" positions people 
who are most likely to have to sign legal documents for the group, say for 
insurance or banking.  The moral is, you can use a boilerplate condo bylaws 
document; go through it to remove those things that would obligate the 
community to behave in a way that is antithetical to cohousing, and ignore 
the rest; instead using an internal set of house rules, as Rob suggested, 
that is developed through the consensus process.  

David Hungerford
Muir Commons