Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How many community meetings to make a decision?

[Maggi (librarymaggi]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 10:26 PM Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:

> It depends on the issue you're trying to decide about -- it might be very
> important but simple enough to agree about in one meeting, or it may be
> complicated or it may have some big emotions associated with it that have
> to be worked through in the course of two, three, or more meetings. And it
> depends on your community's style and method of making decisions.
>

I'm asking about your community, so that's what I'd like to hear about.
Whatever style and method your community uses, it sounds like you are able
to make a decision in one meeting, which is different from the way many
cohousing communities who use consensus work. How would your community
decide to make a decision in one meeting? How often does that happen?


> As for "how many meetings" -- if you mean plenary meetings, our standard
> schedule is one a month but if there are multiple requests for plenary
> agenda time for the current month, we might have a 2nd one.


Thanks! How would your community go ahead with planning a second plenary in
a month? How quick is that turnaround (finding a facilitator, deciding on a
date, etc.)?

But in the early years we met once a week. (Ouch.)
>

For most of the last twenty years, we met twice a month, but recently have
gone to once a month, and it's definitely impacting the speed of our
decision-making.

Maggi Rohde
Touchstone Cohousing
Ann Arbor, MI

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