Re: membership | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Clements and Evan Richardson (evdavwesaol.com) | |
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2012 13:27:27 -0700 (PDT) |
In our community ( http://www.westwoodcohousing.com/policies.html ), we have defined "members" to include owners plus all people 18 or older resident in the community. Our consensus decision making is by the "members." If consensus fails, there is a backup voting which could be members or owners, depending on the issue. Owners make certain financial decisions (voting on the budget). We count owners only when determining whether a meeting has a quorum. It was intended for members to be the group that creates our rules and regulations. Unfortunately our bylaws were drafted with so much ambiguity that it is not legally clear. In North Carolina, we have a planned community act which defines that certain authority, for example the authority to make rules and regulations, is given to the Board unless the declaration says otherwise (for example, unless the declaration says this should be done by owners or members). Since the Bylaws are ambiguous about the members involvement in rules and regulations, the NC Law says that only the Board has the authority to create rules and regulations. So unfortunately we are left with the situation where all our rules were approved only by members, and may therefore not be enforceable. Luckily for us, this should be easy to rectify, though we have not rectified. I think it is a great idea to have the main decision-making group be self-selected (ie allow members to "opt out" or to "vote with their feet" not to be part of the decision-making group). Westwood cohousing has not done this. An example would be to say that one of the criteria for membership in the governing group would be to have attended a certain number of decision-making meetings, say 3 out of the last 12 meetings. A member would remain a member unless he/she disqualifies him/herself by missing meetings, say missing 3 in a row. Other residents who attend more occasionally would not count toward a quorum. I would also prefer to have the "occasional" members would not have the right to "block" consensus decisions of the community. You could equally implement this by saying that members lose the right to "block" a decision by missing a certain number of meetings, and regain the right by attending a certain number of meetings. Some Cohousing communities make most of their decisions through the Board of Directors, and define their "Board of directors" to include all owners or residents. The group which meets monthly or regularly, and takes on most of the decision making for the community, is then called the "Board," rather than the "Members." The "owners" meet only once a year to vote on the budget and amend the bylaws. The Large group Board of directors then would typically be able to make policies, rules, and regulations, and spending decisions in whatever way it wanted without having to first amend the declaration to clarify which roles are the Board's and which are the members'. Anyone looking at the declaration and bylaws would see that these Cohousing Communities are no different from any other Home Owners Associations (ie no scaring off banks from giving mortgages to "communes"), except for the number of people on the Board (larger than is typical) and the mechanism for choosing the Board (automatic offer of membership on the Board to all owners or members). An HOA could even leave the details of selection of the Board out of the Bylaws and just have a "tradition" of inviting all members to stand for election to the Board. An additional legal benefit of this setup is that decisions of a Board of Directors can be defended under an HOA's Directors and Officers insurance, whereas there is some question about whether decisions made by members would be covered. The "large Board" could include renters and other residents as well as owners. It could also include elected "Outside members," such as members of other communities or particular experts in consensus or law or construction, if those experts were willing to commit the time. To me the "Large Board" setup is clean and simple, and an ideal way to set up governance, especially in states like ours where the Board is automatically defined as having certain roles. Note that any community has to be clear about which decisions are made in the plenary or large group, and which are made in smaller subgroups. You would not want the Board in a "Large Board" arrangement to be making daily spending decisions or getting involved in too much detail. Groups set up this way have small groups, say "executive committee," "finance and budget committee," etc, to handle the routine decisions, and reserve the time and energy of the "Large Board" for the large decisions (similar to how the board of a large corporation would act, leaving "management" to the "Management team"). It is always a risk for the large group to spend time and energy on the details of decisions that should be delegated to an implementation committee. Good luck with your deliberations. David Clements. Message: 1 Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:58:51 -0700 From: Mary Ann Clark <drmaryann [at] mac.com> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ membership To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> Message-ID: <782EE4A3-BEB5-4DD0-8189-AA73C5AC9FCD [at] mac.com> Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Everyone living in our community is automatically a member with full rights and responsibilities. Some renters participate, other do not. There are only a couple types of decisions that are limited by law to homeowners--raising dues or a special assessment, electing the HOA officers (who are titular in our organization scheme but necessary by state law), and revising the CC&R and By-Laws). Mary Ann Manzanita Village On Mar 29, 2012, at 6:10 PM, Carol Agate wrote: > > We have quite a few people who live here because they are renting rooms in a homeowner's unit. Some participate in the community and some don't, but only a few have attended meetings. Has anyone tried this? > > How about distinguishing between homeowners and members? We would ask every adult who lives here and wants to participate in the community to become a member. Owners who aren't interested can decline to be members. Renters who want to participate may become members. The quorum would then be based on the membership. Owners, and only owners, would have a vote only when the law requires it. > > Carol Agate > Cornerstone Village > Cambridge, MA
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