Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Development/Construction Committees

[Pablo Halpern (phalpern]

> From cohousing-l [at] uci.com  Fri Mar 17 11:05:00 1995
> Received: from kracken.uci.com by world.std.com (5.65c/Spike-2.0)
> Received: by kracken.uci.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.28.1 #28.3)
>       id <m0rpl4n-0000dLa [at] kracken.uci.com>; Fri, 17 Mar 95 17:05 CST
> From: SPINTUS [at] HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU
> 
> A proposal on the table is that we have a development committee that 
> would converse as often as necessary to make fast decisions, with the 
> committee delegated to make those decisions by the group.  The assumption
> is that the committee would all have to reach consensus to make such 
> decisions.
> 

New View is still in the relatively early stages of construction. That is, 
we have a lot of site work complete, but no foundations in the ground yet. 
Our current committee structure gives certain committees authority to make 
certain kinds of decisions. Our development committee is one of them. Any 
committee empowered to make decisions must follow a consensus process. If 
anybody on the committee feels that a proposed action requires the whole 
group's input he/she may "pull the cord" and escalate the issue to the whole 
group. Pulling the cord looks something like, "I agree with this course of 
action but I think the whole group should have a say in it." The committee 
is strongly discouraged from bringing it to the whole group until they can 
reach consensus among themselves. An exception to this is if they want to 
bring a non-concrete proposal to the whole group for feedback/brainstorming.

As I said, New View has not gotton into the fastest portion of 
construction-time decisions yet. We'll see if this structure is agile enough 
in the next few months.

Good luck with your land deal, Cornerstone. New View is rooting for you!

- Pablo

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Pablo Halpern                          phalpern [at] world.std.com
(508) 435-5274                         Hopkinton, MA, U.S.A.
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