Re: Quorums/Reopening decisions
From: OCCNG11 (normangausscharter.net)
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 22:19:12 -0700 (PDT)
In California, the Board of Directors is ultimately responsible for any decisions the community makes. In our CC&R's, there is no quorum because the only membership meetings recognized are the rigidly formal Annual and Special Membership Meetings. These are the specified ways for electing of board members and making certain financial decisions involving large amounts of money, in which case a 75% majority of the entire membership is necessary before passing a measure. All other membership meetings are not recognized by State law as legitimate decision-making mediums. In our case all our decisions in meetings are sent to the Board for ratification, thus legitimizing our way of doing things.

In our informal community meetings, we have set a quorum at 14 out of 36 households which works out to about 40%. We are a Non-Profit Mutual Benefit Corporation and must follow the California Corporations code. Here the minimum quorum for any decision is 1/3 of the voting block. Since we use consensus, it works out to 100% of 40% of the households.

Norm Gauss
Oak Creek Commons
Paso Robles, CA
----- Original Message ----- From: <tamgoddess [at] comcast.net>
To: "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 9:23 PM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Quorums/Reopening decisions


Ah!â?"which brings me to a point I neglected to make. It doesn't really matter what happens in meetings, or it shouldn't. The vast majority of work on proposals and decisions gets done outside of meetings. By the time it gets to a meeting, everyone should have had a chance to talk about it with someone individually, if they have concerns.

Meetings are really about making sure everyone's on the same page.

Liz
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Kevin Wolf <kevin [at] wolfandassociates.com>
N Street Cohousing doesn't have a quarum requirement.  We just allow
two weeks after a decision is posted for someone in the community to
object in which case it is considered a block of consensus and then
follows that process.  A blocked consensus requires a meeting every
two weeks for up to three months between the person(s) blocking and
representatives of the consensus position.  If after the six
meetings, consensus hasn't been reached, the community will vote with
a 75% supermajority winning.  In 18 years of having this process, we
have yet to get past two blocked consensus meetings before consensus
is reached. We have never voted.  And it is rare that someone blocks
consensus on a meeting which they did not attend and didn't like the
results.

Kevin
--
****************
Kevin Wolf
N Street Cohousing Community member
http://nstreetcohousing.org
724 N St, Davis, CA  95616
530-758-4211
kevin [at] wolfandassociates.com

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