Cohousing-L Mailing List: Community meeting participation

[Joani Blank (joani]

At 12:03 PM 10/1/2007, you wrote:
> A point has been made that the only legally binding decisions are
> those made by the Board.  We routinely send approved proposals to
> the Board which has always automatically ratified them.

In the two California cohousing communities I've lived in, every 
(monthly) community meeting is a meeting of the Board of Directors, 
since everyone is on the Board of Directors.  Technically, every 
household is on the Board of Directors with one "vote" but since 
we've never voted on anything that is moot.  We do have a provision 
for back up voting if we can't reach consensus after a certain number 
of discussions on a particular proposal, but we hope never to do that 
(vote, that is).  In straw polls which we have done very rarely, 
every adult votes, and conceivably when there is call for consensus 
one partner in a two-partner household could consent while his or her 
partner stood aside.  And individuals, not couples or households, 
consent to, stand aside from, or even block a proposal.

In terms of attendance, it's not often mentioned, but meeting 
attendance can be more challenging for a single person than someone 
who has a spouse of significant other who co-owns or co-resides with 
that person, as the single person has to do his/her damndest to be at 
every single meeting or take the chance of missing something 
important to him or her. I'm single and I travel a good bit, so if I 
know that a particular item is coming up on the agenda when I'm going 
to be out of town I can express my opinion to a neighbor and ask him 
or her to raise it at the meeting on my behalf. I can also express my 
opinion in an email to everyone specifically saying that I'm not 
trying to start an online discussion, but that I'm going to be out of 
town for the next meeting and this is what I think about the subject at hand.

Joani Blank
Swan's Market Cohousing
Oakland, CA