Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: quorum

[Rodney Elin (crm114]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: cohousing-l-bounces [at] cohousing.org 
>[mailto:cohousing-l-bounces [at] cohousing.org] On Behalf Of Sharon Villines
>Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 3:03 PM
>To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
>Subject: Re: [C-L]_ quorum
>I would ask why you are having meetings if no one wants to 
>come. The issues
>may not be important enough to have a large meeting. Lowering 
>the quorum is
>perhaps not the right question -- or solution. Or everyone has 
>pretty much
>accepted that the issues will be resolved correctly without 
>them. Perhaps
>these are really issues the Board can resolve.

In my group, Eastern Village cohousing in Silver Spring, Maryland, we
recently have been struggling with setting the quorum for consensus
decisions. At least one member recommended that it be set low enough to
encourage members to attend more meetings for fear that a decision might be
made if they do not attend. When we presented the question to Laird Schaub,
he responded that a quorum needs to be set high enough so that everyone
trusts the attendees to make decisions on behalf of the entire group and
that using fear to encourage attendance is probably not a good idea.

We have addressed the concern of proxies similarly, we will accept and read
in written statements in absentia, but as many members as can need to attend
meetings with decisions because often people's opinions are swayed at the
meeting and we cannot account for last minute input. 

This approach does require a lot of planning and communication (both in
person and electronically) beforehand, but we seem committed to that
approach.


~Rodney Elin
Eastern Village Cohousing
www.easternvillage.org

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