Re: Shared vs Individual Costs
From: Craig Ragland (craigraglandgmail.com)
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:18:09 -0700 (PDT)
Songaia has one budget - which covers our operating expenses and reserves
(and maybe something else that doesn't come to mind?).

All of our projects are individually funded - entirely on a voluntary basis.
None of our facility "improvements" over the recent years have been funded
using "even-steven" payments, although virtually all of our facility
maintenance  has been even-steven. This has worked VERY well for us and has
great reduced cost as a barrier to our collective projects. Some of us have
contributed large amounts, sometimes anonymously and some of us may have
never contributed to these "extra" expenses.

Fred Lanphear is describing the details of this program, and many other
details about our community, in his upcoming book on Songaia that will be
published in a year or so. The book will describe various Songaia programs
and provide multiple points of view on many of them that gives different
takes on how well they work.

Something we seem to get on this list is a lot of proclamations about how
something is in a given community - you might have noted that I proclaimed
that our funding model works "VERY well for us." I don't know whether this
OPINION about our approach is widely held by members of Songaia... we rarely
take polls to learn about the diversity of opinions on our "standard
operating procedures." I hope it is good for all, but may not really know
until I've read Fred's chapter that deals with our finances.

>From my coho-travels, it is becoming clear to me that Songaia handles quite
a few things differently from many other communities. I am coming to believe
that there is actually a fair amount of diversity in culture and practices
as we look across different communities... maybe Raines or Joani, who have
visited far more communities than I can share their points of view about
this?

Craig

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 7:17 AM, Sharon Villines
<sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>wrote:

>
> The following question was posted for the conference call this
> weekend. I'm wondering how various communities handle this:
>
> > What process and which decision making criteria work well in
> > determining which budget expenses are to be shared by all members/
> > house holds and which should be paid by "users" eg. - Hot Tub Users
> > Club vs shared Common House Utilities - Paying for baby sitters
> > during community meetings - Parents users group or full community.
>
> We have previously financed almost everything out of homeowner dues
> because we believed that everyone would use some of the facilities
> some time and it would all balance out.
>
> That has proven not to be true, but some  people believe that doing
> anything else would be too complicated.
>
> (Thanks for all the other questions people have answered recently --
> my plan is to collate and post them. Obviously, haven't gotten to it.)
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing,Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
>
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>
>
>


-- 
Craig Ragland

Coho/US executive director
http://www.cohousing.org
craig [at] cohousing.org

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