Cohousing-L Mailing List: Committees and General Meetings

[Becky Schaller (bschaller]

I have a question about general meetings and how to support committees in
trouble.   One of the committees we have has been  focused on a design for
the perimeter of the play structure.   To make a very long and agonizing
story short, they couldn't come to agreement on a particular wall.    They
asked someone who is not on the committee to facilitate their meetings.
They talked about how they felt and tried to deal with process difficulties.
That didn't seem to help.  They discussed the perimter some more.  They
didn't make progress.   So they decided to bring the issue to the general
meeting.    Before doing so, they planned on agreeing to a  roadmap that
they would propose that the community would follow in coming to a decision.

The committee did come to an agreement to the roadmap at a particular
committee meeting.  However, one person wasn't at that particular committee
meeting, and did not agree with the roadmap.  Not knowing what else to do,
the proposal came to the general meeting anyways, and we started discussing
the roadmap.   What did people like and what did  people not like?  How
would they like to see it changed?   We have now had three general meetings
where we have discussed the road map.  I don't think we  made any noticeable
progress in either of the first two meetings.  I think we spent 50 minutes
on the subject in each of those meetings.  This last meeting, we did make a
little progress in terms of coming to agreement on the roadmap.  We spent 1
1/2 hours on the subject.

At the last Facilitation Team Meeting, we began to look at Tree Bresson's
website.  Particularly, we looked at the page on setting agenda items.  We
noted that Tree had written that if an item is proposed for the agenda which
is the result of an unresolved conflict between two people, then those
people need to  work on the conflict and the general meeting is probably not
a good place for this issue to be resolved.    Even though this is a
conflict within a committee,  I have suggested this to a few people.    Some
people seem to be open to the idea.  Others react as  if this is a  cruel
suggestion.    I can understand this since this committee has certainly gone
through more than enough already.     And certainly, a  conflict within a
committee is different than a conflict between two people.

However, spending over three hours on the process of making a decision in a
general meeting about how to go about making a decision is enough to make me
not want to come to  general meetings.

So my question is, How does a community best help or suppport a committee
which is stuck?  

Becky Schaller
Sonora Cohousing 
_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l