Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: consensus question: what if married owners disagree

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Feb 26, 2010, at 12:37 AM, Jude Foster wrote:

> In testing for consensus, is it by resident, by owner, or by unit?   
> What if
> it concerns the election of the Board, which is required by the  
> Bylaws?
> Owners only, by unit only (with proxy process in place)?  What if two
> people, married to each other, and owners of a unit, disagree?

it depends on your bylaws. Ours says a meeting has to have a quorum  
and there has to be a consensus of everyone at that meeting. Deed  
done. "Testing for consensus" generally means asking for objections  
from anyone in the room.

Class I decisions, involving finances, require a quorum of unit  
owners, counted by unit, not by number of owners. It doesn't matter  
how many owners are in the room as long as a majority of units are  
represented.

Class II decisions, all other decisions, require a majority of  
resident members to be present. That is actually a harder quorum to  
get because we have non-owner associate members who are renters or non- 
owning family members who are less likely to come to meetings. It is  
also common that with partners, only one attends meetings.

> If consensus is not achieved, it goes to a vote, 75% of residents,  
> to be
> approved by 80% of those present.  That seems fairly clear.  In a  
> muddy sort
> of way....

This depends on your bylaws. We've never actually defined a process  
for going to a vote, although we are attempting to do so now.

Married owners disagreeing is not relevant in any of our decision- 
making processes.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
"Logic will get you from A to B.  Imagination will take you  
everywhere."  Albert Einstein