Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: part time residents - meeting agendas & policy development

[Tree Bressen (tree]

Hi,

I agree with nearly everything Lynn wrote, except one piece of the following:

> Your situation of last-minute agenda forming for meetings is a huge
> disadvantage. Try hard to find a way to set agendas ahead of time! Even
> if the actual meeting order and time allotments are not set ahead, use
> email to process given issues, and refine what comes to your business
> meetings to where it is about finishing touches on a proposal, rather
> than hammering out basics.

If a proposal is small, or only requires active participation from a few 
people in the group in order to be successfully carried out, then it can be 
fine to work out the basics in committee and just bring a mostly-finished 
proposal to community meeting.  However, for big items or major policy 
issues, i assert that it's the basics which should be worked out in full 
group meeting, and the finishing touches which should mostly be done in 
committee.

If a committee presents a polished proposal from scratch on, say, work 
policy, you can bet there will be a bunch of resistance.  Who is a small 
committee to determine major choices such as whether or not hours get 
tracked, whether there is a fee if someone doesn't work enough, and which 
work gets included in the policy (e.g., does cooking meals count?)?  Those 
are points that the group at large needs to participate in co-creating the 
answers to.

However, a committee can be enormously helpful in researching or further 
developing a proposal.  For example, a committee can start out the 
discussion by sending out sample work policies from other cohousing 
communities, and/or presenting a list of main questions that need to be 
addressed in a work policy.  Once the community gets clear on their answers 
to some of the main questions, the committee draft a policy that proposes 
certain details, such as, "OK, we hear that the group wants to have a fee 
if someone doesn't contribute enough labor; we propose that fee be $x."

I think overall the most effective procedure on major policy items is to 
take turns having the work done in an active committee (one that keeps 
track of exactly how the policy is developing) and by the whole group 
(sometimes through discussion in meetings and sometimes outside meetings 
through polls, surveys, etc.).

Aside from that, by all means yes to Lynn & Eris's suggestion to create 
your agendas in advance of your meetings!  Cheers,

--Tree



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Tree Bressen
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(541) 484-1156
tree [at] ic.org
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