Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How many teams do you have?

[Bonnie Fergusson (fergyb2]

Short version: we have 5 committees that meet very regularly and another 7 or 
so that meet more sporadically and various ad hoc committees that get set up to 
deal with specific issues that come up.

Long version:  The most active regular committees are:
   Finance, Common House, Garden, Group Process, and Maintenance and Security 
(which includes earthquake and disaster preparedness and some oversight over 
workdays).  They work very smoothly as a rule, handling routine issues and 
bringing larger issues to the monthly HOA meetings with specific 
recommendations which are then discussed and decided on by the whole membership.
   We also have other standing committees that meet less regularly as needed: 
Networking (our email server, wi fi, etc.), Architecture Review, Bicycle, 
Social, Exercise Room, Outside Relations, Family Life. 
   And then we have ad hoc committees that are set up to deal with some 
specific issue of the moment such as Solar (while we were deciding to add solar 
panels to our roof) and Pet Policy Committee.
   We are a small enough community (20 households about 33 adults) that none of 
the committees are very large so they work pretty well.  There is enough 
variety of tasks that most adults can find a committee to be on that suits them.
   Our default problem solving committee is Group Process which is asked to 
take on anything that gets "sticky" but of course the membership as a whole 
generally hashes out the final result in controversial matters.  Group Process 
tries to figure out what the problem is and lay it before the membership in 
such a form that it is clear and potentially resolvable.
They also assign members to talk to folk individually in private to get as much 
info as possible about what the problem is before the matter comes up at an HOA 
meeting for discussion.  In general most work in the community is handled 
through the committee structure.


--- On Mon, 7/14/08, Larry Miller <larry.miller [at] charter.net> wrote:

> From: Larry Miller <larry.miller [at] charter.net>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ How many teams do you have?
> To: "'Cohousing-L'" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Date: Monday, July 14, 2008, 8:05 AM
> Short Version: How many teams does your community have, what
> tasks do  
> they do, and how well does it work?
>