Cohousing-L Mailing List: Help/re: common house use

[Denise Meier and/or Michael Jacob (dmmj]

Tuesday night we had an almost 5 hour city council hearing on our project
which ended in a postponement. Next meeting is 8/20 - the issue is that 2
of the 4 voting councilpeople want us to reduce our units from 14 to 12 as
a "compromise"  to the neighbors, who frankly don't feel that 12 is much
better than 14. On the other hand, it makes our project essentially
unfeasible. They were stalemated and fortunately continued the issue,
which gives us time to work on this.

One of the issues of concern was that our commonhouse not become a
"community center" of any sort that would result in a significant increase
in traffic on this fairly-rural-but-still-in-city-limits road.

The city is cognizant that there is not much THEY can do to restrict our
use of our commonhouse, even in terms of whether or not we can invite
guests, but this is an issue impeding approval of the project. 

Did any group have to put restrictions on the use of their common house,
perhaps in the CC&R agreement, or in some other way? We are being
pressured by the supporting councilpeople to offer something along this
line to allay the neighbor's fears that we will hold rave parties every
saturday night. On the other hand, I would like to be able to use the
common house for gatherings that are too big for my home - isn't that
part of the point?

Thanks for any help you can offer
Denise Meier

_________

One quotable line from a disgruntled neighbor:
"With all due respect, the mayor of Chico doesn't live here"

(We got letters of support from the mayors of several towns that have coho
projects already built).