Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Spending Extra Money

[Dahako (Dahako]

Hi-
 
I facilitate a lot of our financial decisions and for capital  projects I 
like to do a variation on the budget party that sorts out  project priorities, 
depth of support, and a relative value on spending  v. not spending. First, 
Finance Team makes known the amount of money expected to  be available without 
a 
special assessment, for capital improvements during the  next 2-year cycle.
 
We put up flip charts around the common dining room walls. At minimum, each  
sheet describes a capital project proposed by a team or individual including 
an  estimated budget, who is the proposed project manager or contact, and at 
least  one community value supported by the project.  The project does not 
already  have to have group consensus.  At the bottom, the sheet is divided 
into 2  
columns, A and B.  Finance Team sponsors a sheet called "Spend No  Money".
 
I hand out 8 sticky notes to each household. On the top of each stack  is 
written a dollar amount.  This dollar amount equals one-eighth of the  amount 
that household would have to pay to make ALL the proposed projects  happen. 
(The 
formula to get the sticky note amount is (Total Cost of Proposed  Capital 
Projects times the Household's Share of EVC Expenses) divided by  8.  The 
Household's Share of EVC Expenses is in our condo documents and  is a blend of 
percentage of total development square footage and a flat  per-unit share.)  We 
tell 
each household that spending each sticky  represents the willingness on the 
part of their household for the community to  spend that much of their 
household's contribution to our common  funds on the project.
 
 
The A column is for the first sticky a household puts on a project.   The B 
column is for any subsequent stickies the same household "spends" on the  
project.

 
Project backers stand near their sheets and hawk their projects (by any  
means fair or foul) as members of each household "spend" their "EVC bucks"  on 
projects or on spending no money.  We start this process in a meeting,  but it 
can take a few days for members of a household to come to agreement and  for 
all 
households to have a chance to project shop.  Finance Team tapes  down the 
stickies after each round.  
 
At the end, Finance Team does the grand count and announces how many  
households supported each project (the A column) and how deep the support was  
(the B 
column).  That gives the community a pretty good idea of how to go  forward.  
Any project with no support is dropped unless the Building  Systems Team 
tells us we really need to do it to keep the building standing up  or to meet 
our 
legal obligations.
 
My recollection is that Spend No Money usually runs second or third.   Faced 
with the idea of spending "real" money, many people decide we have it  pretty 
good already without a lot of new bells and whistles.
 
-Jessie Handforth Kome
Eastern Village Cohousing
Silver Spring, Maryland
"Where I wish I had more money to spend on the common kitchen. :>)  "