Cohousing-L Mailing List: Spending Extra Money

[bschaller (bschaller]

At various times I've seen discussion of how to decide how to spend extra
money.   I know this can be a very emotional topic and I think it can be
helpful to have a variety of processes from which a community might
choose.  Here is a process that I've recently thought of.

The whole community agrees on certain categories of spending.  These might
be related to the various committees which are already functioning in the
community.    Additionally, the whole community agrees to the amount to be
spent in each category.   Then each committee is given the responsibility
and the authority of deciding how that amount of money will be spent.
Perhaps the community would decide to have special committee meetings for
these decisions and perhaps not.

The main advantage to this idea is that like items would be competing with
similarly like items.  For example, some people might think that a
particular expense is desired for long term maintenance and others may
prefer to spend the money on something that would promote more  enjoyable
community building activities.   It might help to think of this as similar
to meal planning.  We might ask, Do we want to have macoroni and cheese or
a casserole?  Or, "Do we want to have cake or cookies?"  Or "Carrots or
corn?"  But we usually don't ask,  "Which of the following  are we going
to choose:  macaroni and cheese, a casserole, cake, cookies, carrots, or
corn?  We think in terms of general categories and I think it would be
helpful to think first in general categories when deciding how to spend
extra money.

I would be interested to know if anyone thinks this idea might be helpful
to their community or if you think the idea is filled with problems.

Becky Schaller