Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Refining concerns

[Cheryl Charis-Graves (ccharis]

What we have discovered in Harmony Village is that there are certain kinds
of tasks that will occur no matter what because they are important to
people/relationships and because someone has a burning passion from their
heart to do them or because the outcome is terribly important to someone.
The garden, building a children's fort, managing common meals, maintaining
the hot tub, getting childcare for meetings. There are also several tasks in
this category because they can be done with no physical labor involved or do
not require a specific skill set.

There is another whole set of tasks that NO ONE has a passion for, that
require a specific skill set, or require  a lot of physical labor.
Supervising the painting of the windows throughout the community (we have
ongoing maintenance issues), maintaining the roofs and parapets and stucco,
ongoing common house management and clean up, supervising turf maintenance,
maintaining the exterior lighting systems, snow removal and hardscape
(concrete, bricks, asphalt) maintenance, maintaining exterior/interior
furniture in the common house/patio, weeds/leaves/gutters/shrubs, not to
mention paying bills, managing the budget, handling insurance issues, etc.
These tasks are hard work, not much fun, and somewhat "invisible" if they
are getting done -- no one notices unless something is falling apart or
stops working

There are always lots of volunteers for taking food to a sick neighbor.
Almost no one wants to repair the ground lights when they get broken by the
lawn mowers. And EVERYONE hates thistles but  EVEN MORE don't want to be the
one digging them out in the hot, hot sun.

Certain tasks will get done without anyone "organizing" them. Certain tasks
will languish no matter how much you organize and request and plead for
volunteers. Unfortunately, the ones that languish are most often the ones
that, if left undone, will result in significant financial consequences down
the line. We have come to label these "critical" maintenance tasks.

We have drawn a line between "critical" and "non-critical" maintenance
tasks. We are developing plans to possibly pay for labor to accomplish the
"critical" tasks whereas we will not pay for labor to accomplish the
"non-critical" tasks.

And this is only after YEARS of trying to get everything done through
volunteer labor.


-- 
Cheryl Charis-Graves
Harmony Village Cohousing
Golden, Colorado
http://www.harmonyvillage.org

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