Cohousing-L Mailing List: Quorum at meetings

[Terry (Sarito) Whatley (terry.whatley]

>Whether this is frequently seen in cohousing is a question I have.

We require (at least one member of each of) 14 of
our 34 households to be present at the time
of a decision in order to proceed with the decision.

The quorum issue is the one issue where we almost
invoked our backup vote process.  (So far we never have).

All of our general meetings are meetings of the board, since
our board is all of us.

Meeting agendas are always posted 48 hours in advance,
and a draft agenda is usually posted earlier than that.

People who can't make the meeting have to talk over their
concerns with people who can make the meeting and find
someone who can represent their concerns.  We do not
allow a formal proxy, since a written statement can't
participate in a discussion, have its mind changed, etc.

If we had to wait to make decisions until everybody was
present, we'd never be able to make any decisions at all.

>Another question I have is whether justice is being done by
>ignoring any concerns of members not able to attend the business
>meeting.

I'm not aware of us ever having ignored the concerns of
anyone.  We have at least once (and I think it is several times)
not made a decision on a proposal because we knew that
someone had strong feelings about the issue and
wasn't there to be part of the decision.  That can take the
form of a block, or the facilitation team not scheduling the topic
for a given meeting or for a specific time segment of a meeting.

It is very rare that a person really has no choice as to whether
to attend a meeting or not.  It is pretty rare among us that
only one person has a particular concern.

I sometimes think it is unjust to require those who take the time to
attend meetings to carry the responsibility for making decisions
without the input of those who choose not to attend.

But in the end, it is relationship and trust that makes it all work,
or not.

Terry (Sarito) Whatley
Nevada City CoHousing (CA)