Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Fiduciary Responsibilities - Taking Care of the Community

[Norman Gauss (normangauss]

Mariana:

An example of a situation where only the Board should act is in financial
problems with individual members.  These are considered confidential.  Also,
we feel that determining penalties on members who purposely violate the
association rules or abuse their parking privileges are not suitable matters
for general discussion.

The Board is a fiduciary body.  It is therefore must act in the best of
interests of the entire community without any pitching of a proposal for
personal reasons.  The whole community cannot be its own fiduciary because
it cannot prevent personal interests from figuring into community decisions.
A Board is legally required to manage the community for everybody's benefit.
People are elected to perform such duties.  The whole community cannot elect
itself to perform such duties.

Norm Gauss
Oak Creek Commons
Paso Robles, CA

-----Original Message-----
From: Mariana Almeida [mailto:missmgrrl [at] yahoo.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 12:18 PM
To: Cohousing-L
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Fiduciary Responsibilities - Taking Care of the
Community


Hi Norman, 
You mentioned: 
> Our membership is uncomfortable with the Board making unilateral 
> decisions and is not willing to give the Board leeway to act in the 
> best interests of the HOA 


Can you give us more details? 

Is the issue about delegation of power to a board? And lack of trust that
this board will act in the best interests of the HOA? 

We have a 14 unit community where the board is the whole membership, so we
don't have this issue. For weighty matters related to the CC&Rs or money,
everyone weighs in.

Thanks, 

Mariana
Berkeley Cohousing in Calif



>________________________________
> From: Norman Gauss <normangauss [at] charter.net>
>To: 'Cohousing-L' <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> 
>Sent: Wednesday, July 4, 2012 10:24 AM
>Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Fiduciary Responsibilities - Taking Care of the
Community
> 
>
>With only 15 households, that is much easier to do than when a community
has
>36 households.  Some of our members don't even live here.  Their units are
>leased out to tenants.  Some of our tenants attend business meetings but
are
>not allowed in the decision making process of financial issues.  We would
>have great difficulty in making the entire community a fiduciary body.
>There are even confidential decisions affecting individual members that
must
>be made in closed session.
>
>Norm Gauss
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: oz [mailto:oz [at] ozragland.com] 
>Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2012 9:59 AM
>To: Cohousing-L
>Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Fiduciary Responsibilities - Taking Care of the
>Community
>
>
>Many cohousing communities, Songaia included, have a board which includes
>every adult member of the community - so the board and the community
>membership are one...
>
>On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Norman Gauss
<normangauss [at] charter.net>wrote:
>
>>
>> The whole community does
>> not have fiduciary responsibilities for its members and cannot be held 
>> liable for negligence or purposely making decisions based on personal 
>> preferences of a few members.
>>
>> The Board of Directors, being a fiduciary body, legally cannot let 
>> personal interests of its members be a basis for its decisions.  It 
>> must have the welfare of the community in mind rather than the welfare of
>its members.
>
>
>
>> Our membership is uncomfortable with the Board making unilateral 
>> decisions and is not willing to give the Board leeway to act in the 
>> best interests of the HOA.
>>
>> Does this type of conflict exist in other cohousing communities?
>>
>> Norman Gauss
>> Oak Creek Commons
>> Paso Robles, CA
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
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>>
>>
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