RE: Process cards--decision point is not voting
From: Rowenahc (rowenahccs.com)
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 04:37:01 -0700 (MST)
I agree that the decision-point in consensus should never be referred to as
voting.  It is far preferable to continue to use the cards until all that
are raised are green - at that point the group has consensus.  Hopefully if
all the preparatory work has been done this will happen quite quickly.  If
we do not reach consensus we go away and do some more individual or small
group work rather than call special meetings to "vote" on something about
which there is no consensus.   We've never had to vote and it is my guess
that a large number of people would vote against anything that was proposed
for a formal vote, regardless of the merits!

If consensus is the preferred method of reaching a decision the group should
never actually have to use the vote - that is in the documents to satisfy
legal requirements for bankers and such!  At Cambridge Cohousing we only
concern ourselves with the percentage interest issue and voting once a year
when the budget is approved.  Like most condominium documents, ours require
that a substantial percentage (67% in our case) of the ownership interest
must approve the assessments in the annual budget.   We are careful to make
sure that we have the appropriate quorum (not difficult) and then we call
the final decision a vote rather than reaching consensus!

Rowena


_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.