Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Digest, Vol 146, issue 25 & 26—financing special projects

[Martha Wagner (wordbizpdx]

Martha Wagner
writing/editing/proofreading
www.marthawagner.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marthawagner
(503) 319-3353

On Mar 29, 2016, at 3:16 AM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:

Thanks to Ann Zabaldo, Lynn Nadeau and Sharon Villines for responses to the 
question I raised about community mechanisms for funding special projects. More 
comments would be welcome! I want to comment below on the response from Ann, 
which seems pretty unusual. My community has a reserve fund, of course, but it 
may require funds from another source to  finance a large expense such as 
seismic retrofit work to reduce the impact of the predicted Cascadia subduction 
zone earthquake.

Ann’s comments (below) are especially interesting to us and lead us to want to 
know more. Does Takoma Park’s resale and rental pod serve as an alternative to 
a realtor for members wanting to sell their unit, providing the same services 
as a realtor would, including all the paperwork, etc.? Does the group also 
manage an active wait list? What percentage of people selling make a sizable 
voluntary donation such as the $20,000 per sale that you mentioned?

> Here at Takoma village we cover large capital improvements through careful 
> funding of our reserve funds. 
> 
> Sometimes a project is funded through a combination of using reserve funds 
> and donations from members.  
> 
> We have not used special assessments or any major fundraising targeted toward 
> a particular project. Any "fundraising" that is done goes into the reserve 
> fund. 
> 
> In the last three years our resale and rental pod has raised $30,000 in 
> contributions by sellers who have contributed the money in acknowledgment of 
> the money they saved by not using a real estate agent.  Our resale and rental 
> pod saves homesellers an average of $20,000 per home sale.  The contributions 
> are strictly voluntary. Funds go into the reserves for use on projects 
> decided by the community. This past year the funds were used in part to buy 
> the new solar array for our community. 



Martha Wagner
Columbia Ecovillage
Portland, OR




Today's Topics:

  1. Re: financing for special projects (Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah)
  2. Re: financing for special projects (Sharon Villines)
  3. Katie McCamant to Speak April 26 in Fair Oaks CA (Mary Claus)
  4. Re: facebook advertising (Linda H)
  5. ZEGG forum (no relation to Landmark Forum) (Sarito Whatley)


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 09:14:22 -0700
From: Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah <welcome [at] olympus.net>
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ financing for special projects
Message-ID: <56F6A1B2-065E-459E-A6C7-8040308FA07E [at] olympus.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Ann Zabaldo refers to funding special projects from "reserves". Here at 
RoseWind Cohousing in Port Townsend WA our Reserves are specifically for repair 
and replacement: eventual expenses for things like roofing, major appliances 
etc. At one point we somewhat accidentally found ourselves withsome 
undesignated funds (interest accrual, I think) and titled it "Unallocated 
Funds". That has been a source of funding, with community approval, for a few 
capital projects such as our greenhouse. There's not much left in that fund at 
this point. Sometimes in our annual budget we have created a Project Reserve, 
to accrue funding over multiple years for an eventual capital expense, 
something we want but don't want to pay for all in one year's budget. 

We try to bring up new projects at annual budget-setting time, but sometimes 
bring a proposal to the community at other times which requires funding from 
some other source(s), such as use of unallocated funds, funds already tagged 
for some other purpose, or even donations. Right now for example we are working 
out where to find the money, mid year, for an upgrade to our heating ability 
for the  common house dining room. 

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
in the NW where it's 50 degrees, green and flowers everywhere

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 14:12:42 -0400
From: Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ financing for special projects
Message-ID: <F9A76077-3640-4D41-891E-60BA4CED0FA6 [at] sharonvillines.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8


> On Mar 28, 2016, at 12:14 PM, Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah <welcome [at] 
> olympus.net> wrote:
> 
> Ann Zabaldo refers to funding special projects from "reserves". Here at 
> RoseWind Cohousing in Port Townsend WA our Reserves are specifically for 
> repair and replacement: eventual expenses for things like roofing, major 
> appliances etc.

Capital Replacement Funds are reserved for replacing those items that "protect 
the capital investment of owners?  These replacements are expected to replace 
at the standard that is current at the time of replacement, which is usually 
much better than the original. Our standard in the Bylaws is ?First Class.? If 
you didn?t do this, the capital investment would be diminished because it 
didn?t keep up with the market.

This means that when you replace part of a piece of equipment covered in your 
capital reserve study as a replacement or major repair, you can use those 
funds. So while we didn?t have solar before, we did have electrical wires, 
etc., that provided electrical service to our common lighting. We used the 
funds saved for those items to upgrade the system to ?current first class? 
standards. And will replace those funds with the savings from using solar 
panels.

The total amount we save based on our reserve study is based on the amounts we 
are expected to need at various points in time. That amount is based on the 
cost of equipment and labor to replace each item, plus construction inflation, 
minus expected interest on funds in the accounts (currently zero!). But we 
don?t have a limit for replacing each item. We watch what is calculated for 
each item but expend funds as needed, not limited to the amount used to 
calculate the total. Then we recalculate the balance periodically to adjust 
deposits up or down.

I think Rosewind funds for each item so when one item is funded, it is no 
longer included in the total needed. This would restrict your planning, I 
think. (This is old information so you may have changed.)

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org






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End of Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 146, Issue 26
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