Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Does anyone do voting instead.....

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

At 01:55 PM 9/16/2011, you wrote:
> ....or how about a qurom being the number of people
> who show up for a meeting? Thanks Regine @ Nevada City Coho in
> California.

Our "quorum" has always been whoever shows up at the business meeting. The 
big irrevocable decisions were made in the early years, when meetings were 
held weekly and were very well attended. Now, most low-level decisions are 
made at the committee level, and those that land at the plenary are usually 
not very controversial, so we have sparse attendance at most of the monthly 
business meetings.

After all, most people don't join cohousing because they love to attend 
meetings, even though the early years of frequent meetings and difficult 
decisions are certainly bonding, kind of like boot camp.  We don't see why 
proposal sponsors and those who bothered to come should be penalized 
because their neighbors would rather not be there.  If an issue is really 
important, more people will surely be there.

I can recall only one occasion when a decision was deferred because someone 
at a sparsely attended meeting felt sure the community didn't understand 
the ramifications of the proposal (the evidence being the sparse 
attendance) and that the issue needed more publicity.

    Muriel
    Shadowlake Village Cohousing
    Blacksburg, VA