Re: Emergency decisions???
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:39:29 -0700 (PDT)

On Mar 24, 2008, at 1:45 PM, Kristen Simmons wrote:

Thanks for your response! Who in your community is empowered to make the
emergency decisions? Is it an individual, team, or board?

The Board.

It seems reasonable that during contruction there would be a small
construction committee who make the faucet type decisions (and the other,
bigger ones that come up during construction).

The Design Team. That team morphed into the Facilities Team after move- in.

For the other facilty emergencies, is there a single committee or individual who could make the judgement? Or was it who ever happened to be around when
the inspector visited?


I deleted the sentence that said this because I wasn't sure how it happened. I think the person who was here when the inspectors showed up took care of it. And the inspectors always show up without notice so it really is whoever is around.

My sense is that at that time we were pretty much in disarray having just moved in and having not a clue that the elevator needed to be inspected or that storm sewers needed cleaned. Peter would just have gone ahead without waiting. It was clear that we needed to do it and he would ask questions later. He was closely involved with the Admin Team and the budget.

Other decisions about facilities that are urgent or opportunities (found sale and went ahead), the person might just ask someone else that they perceive to be in some position of authority or knowledge or good judgement to see what they think, then go ahead. We have a decision-making policy that governs decisions that are not urgent. Expenditures under $1,000 that were not specified in the last year's budget just require posting on email and waiting a week or so to see if there are objections.

We really don't "lay blame." If something happens that a team or the board doesn't like or thinks we should have a policy on, we write it after the fact. We are now working on a policy on getting bids, for example, because a person has moved in who works in her day job on contracting and has firmer standards than we have operated under in the past.

Sometimes people buy things on "spec" so to speak and the team can decide if it wants it or not -- but these tend to be smaller items than a $4,000 storm sewer cleaning.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing,Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org




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