Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Voting backup - help with fine print

[Diana Kardia (dbd]

In a recent community meeting discussion about the role of voting in  
our consensus process, we found it very helpful to emphasize another  
point in all this that too often gets overlooked:

Because we are governed by condo law, there are decisions that  
require votes even when consensus is "working" (i.e., has no need for  
voting as a fall back). (Right now we're making changes to our Master  
Deed.)  This situation requires that we be aware of two things:

1)  that not all voting happens because consensus "fails" (and yes,  
what it means for consensus to fail or be deadlocked is it's own  
important discussion) - sometimes voting needs to be cast as a final  
formal step to a successful consensus process.

2)  just because a legal process requires a vote doesn't mean that  
voting is the way the actual decision is made - it's important to  
outline the exact process that a decision can be moved through both  
consensus and voting.

Diana Kardia
www.sunward.org


Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:20:27 -0800
From: "Jenny Guy" <jenstermeister [at] gmail.com>
Subject: [C-L]_ Voting backup - help with fine print

Hi, we want to include a voting backup provision in the Operating  
Agreement
for our LLC.
We need something that will make banks happy when we go to get a
construction loan; we been advised that they'll want to know that we can
make decisions quickly when we need to, but we also need to be able  
to make
our own rules about how we use consensus, and when we would use a vote.