Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: childcare funding

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

HI Lynn! Long time no see. We fund our childcare as an annual budget
operating expense. (we only have 10 meetings a year we provide care for,
team meetings are done by parent swap as needed).  Our sitters are community
members, they get paid a good wage and we also train younger kids who are
old enough to start sitting at a lesser paid wage so they learn the ropes.
In this way the younger teens are trained to take the job later.  We have
no liability concerns since they are cared for by community members, our
kids are divided usually by age group and people host them in their homes.
Since we had kids, funding childcare has been a  assessment and as far as I
can remember (which gets less and less with each passing year) I do not
recall us ever questioning that expense other than, is what we allocated
enough?  We have 14 childcare aged kids and about 8 teenage experienced
childcare providers to draw from, we use 2 or 3 childcare providers for a
meeting and we have a childcare coordinator adult who manages the system.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Community
Snohomish County, WA 

-----Original Message-----
From: Lynn Nadeau [mailto:welcome [at] olympus.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 1:07 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_ childcare funding

If your group funds childcare for meetings or other community events, for
members' children, how do you do this? Is it a line item in your annual
budget? Is it a donation collected at the time, or for a kitty, in advance? 

Do people have any concerns about group liability? Common sense says a
babysitter is not likely to be a licensed, bonded etc contractor, and that
legal issues should not run the show. We've been funding ours by a donation
kitty, periodically restocked, to keep it legally more separate, and maybe
for some people to make it more a matter of choice. 

Of course, there are other childcare issues. Even with funds ready, locating
a caregiver who is competent, affordable, and available (especially for a
Saturday morning business meeting, or weekend retreat) has been a serious
challenge. 

What are your experiences? 

Lynn at RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA up and running for years now,
about 8 little kids, probably a few less in care for an event
www.rosewind.org
>  
> 
> Today's Topics: 
> 
>    1. Revisiting Consensus (Fred H Olson)
>    2. Re: Revisiting Consensus (Sharon Villines)
>    3. Developing Participation Policy (full-version,  not
>       guidelines) Timing? (Scott Bentley)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 04:35:00 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Fred H Olson <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
> Subject: [C-L]_ Revisiting Consensus
> To: -cohousing-L mailing list <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Message-ID:
>       <Pine.LNX.4.62.0709100431290.12409 [at] farnsworth.tigertech.net>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> Joel Plotkin <joel.plotkin [at] sunyit.edu> is the author of the message 
> below.
> It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager 
> <fholson [at] cohousing.org> since it was sent in html only which the list 
> does not handle. We are working on finding a way for Joel to send 
> plain text.  Fred
> --------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------
> 
> COHOrts: 
> 
> A question regarding consensus--Our community uses consensus as our 
> decision-making process, with CT Butler's essay as a guideline. A 
> question arose yesterday about revisiting an issue on which consensus 
> had been reached several years ago. The more procedurally-oriented of 
> us (still hearing crackles, perhaps, from remaining synapses of Roberts'
> Rules of Order) wanted first to reach consensus on a proposal to 
> revisit the earlier consensus. Others said that simply reopening 
> discussion was an implicit agreement to revisit the earlier consensus, 
> but that without a new consensus, the old decision stands. This last 
> is what Butler writes in his essay.
> 
> It seems to me, in the light of the morning, that trying to arrive at 
> a consensus to revisit an earlier consensus is inherently virtually 
> impossible, given that some members have already expressed some 
> disaffection with the earlier decision; that not agreeing to revisit 
> the issue undemocratically silences those who wish to reopen the
discussion.
> 
> Our group has decided to continue work on the issue in a smaller group 
> (a traditional consensus next-step), implicitly acknowledging that the 
> earlier consensus IS being revisited, without a formal proposal to 
> revisit.
> 
> So here's where I'd like input: Do any of the consensus-based or 
> sociocracy groups have language about revisiting earlier consensi 
> (consensuses? consensim?) or experience that may help a group with 
> very varied backgrounds in consensus better understand this issue.
> 
> A further question: the issue at question is that our current Rules 
> and Regulations require members of the Community Owners Association to 
> be partners in our tree farm business venture, a 
> separately-incorporated LLC. Those Coho groups with attached or 
> covalent businesses--how do you handle the issue of a COA member not 
> wishing to be joined legally to that business?
> 
> Joel Plotkin
> Hundredfold Farm
> Orrtanna, PA
> 
>  
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 08:14:14 -0400
> From: Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Revisiting Consensus
> To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Message-ID: <555B4A2D-5F6B-49EA-AEDF-725B298C1AC5 [at] sharonvillines.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
> 
> 
> On Sep 10, 2007, at 7:35 AM, Fred H Olson wrote: 
> 
>> So here's where I'd like input: Do any of the consensus-based or 
>> sociocracy groups have language about revisiting earlier consensi 
>> (consensuses? consensim?) or experience that may help a group with 
>> very varied backgrounds in consensus better understand this issue.
> 
> In sociocracy, a decision is revisited whenever there is new 
> information or when goals change. The basic decision, to use consent 
> as a decision making method, is the only decision that is not 
> revisited. BUT in sociocracy, consent is used to make policy 
> decisions, not all decisions.
> 
> A group can decide by consent to allow the leader to make decisions 
> autocratically on a day to day basis, use majority vote to determine 
> the date of a bike race, or use a theocratic belief system to 
> determine the decorations on a religious holidays.
> 
> What most groups using consensus decision making lack is a structure 
> in which to make those decisions. In a sociocratic structure, it would 
> be clear where and how a decision would be reopened.
> 
> The purpose of consensus decision making is harmony and commitment.  
> Within the limits of the goals of the group, consensus should address 
> the needs of all members of the group. It sounds like your group is no 
> longer doing that so to use consensus as an excuse for not addressing 
> those needs is a blatantly contradictory.
> 
> On the other hand, the goals of the group do place some limits on what 
> needs the group is pledged to address.
> 
>> A further question: the issue at question is that our current Rules 
>> and Regulations require members of the Community Owners Association 
>> to be partners in our tree farm business venture, a 
>> separately-incorporated LLC. Those Coho groups with attached or 
>> covalent businesses--how do you handle the issue of a COA member not 
>> wishing to be joined legally to that business?
> 
> This sounds like a legal question. If people joined the group knowing 
> that this was true, they may have little legal recourse to change the 
> situation.
> 
> Under sociocracy, this decision would not be changed until there was 
> consensus to do so. The old decision would stand until a new one is 
> made.
> 
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Coauthor with John Buck of We the People Consenting to a Deeper 
> Democracy A Guide to Sociocratic Principles and Methods
> ISBN: 9780979282706
> http://www.sociocracy.info
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:27:01 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Scott Bentley <sleeper40 [at] sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: [C-L]_ Developing Participation Policy (full-version,        not
>       guidelines) Timing?
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Message-ID: <78725.27017.qm [at] web81209.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Hello,
>  
> Our facilitation committee at La Querencia, in Fresno, Ca., decided that
at out upcoming meeting Thursday we would find out what members would like
to be on an ad hoc committee to develop the participation policy for our
community.  As I'm putting the agenda together for the meeting, the question
came up--is it too soon to work on the participation policy, as construction
has not quite begun, so we're a year or so away from move in.  Any light
shed on this topic would be appreciated. 
>  
> Thanks, Scott Bentley
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
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> End of Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 44, Issue 8
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