Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Cost Apportionment of Infrastructure (FWD)

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

John Willson  Cascade Cohousing  JOHN [at] EPCORPORATESERVER.DELM.TAS.GOV.AU
is the author of this message but
due to a listserv problem it was posted by the COHOUSING-L sysop.

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The questions and answers to the problems below are not entirely new and 
there are some existing models in place for other structures.

In Australia the voting role for local government is made up of owners and 
residents.  Each owner is entitled to a vote (this may be more than one vote 
per household) and each resident who is not an owner is entitled to a vote.  
If you own more than one property you get more than one vote.  There are 
arguments about why non resident owners can vote and the useuall answer is 
that the taxes are paid by the owners not residents.

Several hundred years ago the Ilse of Man had a similar voting system.  The 
island is semi autonomous and has its own legal structure an parliment.  The 
voting was once one vote per household.  Most household were a normal 
family, ie mother, father and kids.  The rules did not state who in the 
household voted, and if the household was entirley women they still got one 
vote.  This was at the time in England, just over the water, where only male 
land owners were allowed to vote.

The common way of resolving these issues is to ask:  who pays the bills, who 
is affected by the decisions.  Every voting system has problems, in fairness 
on who votes etc and even on the voting method.  Acknowledge the problems 
and be open about the problems with any system you propose.

John Willson
Cascade Cohousing.


>Rob Sandelin wrote
>> At Sharingwood we chose an egalitarian decision structure and an 
>>egalitarian funding structure. One home, one vote, one equal share of 
>>all the costs.
>>
>At Cascade cohousing we also sought an egalitarian funding and decission
>making structure (along with other goals) We have a fairly even mix of one
>person households and two or more person households. Our one person
>households tend not to see a per home share of costs as egalitarian and our
>two person households do not see a one vote per home system as egalitarian.
>
>I guess the relevant questions are what is the economic unit, the household
>or the person? and what is the decsion making unit the household or the person?
>
>The answers are likely to vary from group to group and even between
>households within one group.  So what is egalitarian is not absolute.
>Different groups trying to be egalitarian are likely to come up with
>different solutions.
>