Re: How many community meetings to make a decision?
From: Muriel Kranowski (murielkvt.edu)
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2021 14:22:41 -0700 (PDT)
We have a process in which people are invited early in the month to submit
requests for plenary agenda time by a deadline. A team meets, reads all the
requests that were received by the deadline, and determines how to
construct the agenda for the upcoming plenary meeting. That team can decide
at that same meeting to hold a 2nd plenary meeting, one or two weeks after
the first one. The ensuing plenary meeting(s) and their agendas would be
publicized right after that meeting. Most months we have only one plenary
meeting but in the last 12 months we might have had 3 or 4 second plenary
meetings.

It's assumed that a facilitator will be available. Our bylaws permit the
people attending a plenary meeting to come up with a meeting facilitator on
the spot if there isn't one present (or cancel the meeting if no
facilitator is found), but I haven't seen that happen.

On Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 1:10 PM Maggi <librarymaggi [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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