Re: part time residents
From: Lynn Nadeau (welcomeolympus.net)
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 11:24:51 -0700 (PDT)
RoseWind Cohousing, in Port Townsend WA, is about 15 years "in". Because 
of our location, many of our members have come from Seattle, which is a 
two and a half hour drive away. For years, we had a substantial number of 
members who either had long commutes to meetings, or couldn't come. We 
farmed out some committee work that didn't have to be done here in town, 
to a couple of committees that met in Seattle, things like the creation 
of our legal documents. That way all the committee work didn't have to be 
done by the smaller number of us here in Port  Townsend. We had one 
committee with members from both sides of the water here, and sometimes 
they met at a restaurant half way. Other times, they used a speaker phone 
to include a distant committee member.

Those still in the city also had socials with each other -  potlucks etc.

As our houses got built (one by one - we're a "lot development" type 
project) and more of our members were on site, we still had some who were 
distance members. It worked all right. At the point where half our 
members had moved on site, the dynamic on site was different in a 
positive way. 

But even now, when we've been fully owned for years, and almost all the 
houses are built and occupied, there are still some who work half the 
week in Seattle, or commute to consulting jobs that take them out of 
state for a month at a time, or overseas jobs for extended times. 

Email helps a whole lot, as people can chime in from Morocco or Boston or 
sick in bed. We've always had whatever critical mass is, to keep things 
moving forward. 

Some technicalities: You can't block consensus when you are not there, 
except if you succeed in getting others to agree with you and THEY do not 
consent to a proposal in a given form, and are there to participate in 
the discussion and process. Financial obligations are identical, 
regardless of where you are or how much you participate.

Your situation of last-minute agenda forming for meetings is a huge 
disadvantage. Try hard to find a way to set agendas ahead of time! Even 
if the actual meeting order and time allotments are not set ahead, use 
email to process given issues, and refine what comes to your business 
meetings to where it is about finishing touches on a proposal, rather 
than hammering out basics. Assign someone(s) to monitor what issues are 
in process, where you are with each one, and to make sure that people are 
following through with "their" issues or proposals. Even with a small 
group, use a division of labor, and use email and topic-oriented 
discussions to move things forward. 

Another boon, especially when we were still geographically spread out, 
was a weekend retreat, preferably somewhere "away", where so much more 
could be processed, not only because of two whole days of meeting time 
(with fun stuff and diversity of activities built in), but as discussions 
spilled over into walks, meal preparation, social times.  

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.rosewind.org
http://www.ptguide.com
http://www.ptforpeace.info (very active peace movement here- see our 
photo)

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