Cohousing-L Mailing List: Quorum Requirements

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 26 Sep 2011, at 1:02 PM, Eris Weaver wrote:

> Bringing items to the whole group when most of the group has no
> interest or knowledge relevant to the decision results in boredom and
> disengagement. Bringing too many small issues to the plenary can also be a
> symptom of a lack of trust & connection in the group.

We definitely have the second, and on the first are discussing quorum for Class 
2 decisions that involved community living issues. Class 1 is money and legal). 
I'm persuaded by the argument Muriel Kranowski from Shadow Lake in Blacksburg 
VA: 

“Any actual quorum requirement only penalizes those who cared enough about an 
issue to do the work on it beforehand and bring a proposal, and those who care 
enough to attend the meeting. Issues that many members see as important draw a 
good crowd; issues that are non-controversial and/or that don't seem to be 
critical…draw just a few. It's a self-regulating system."

It also prevents those who are interested in discussing a topic from discussing 
it unless "everyone" is interested. "Everyone" is a vaguely defined threshold 
that is based largely on the facilitator pod and loud emails which prevent it 
from even getting on the agenda.

Unless an issue is very emotionally charged, small group discussions at other 
than the regular meeting time are badly attended. We've also found that having 
a full group discussion often resolves an issue — no proposal necessary. So 
starting with a membership discussion on proposals more complex than a major 
budget item approval happens more often. 

This also saves a lot of proposal writers from self-immolation because they 
spent three years writing something that has to be started from scratch again.

Do any other communities have a very small or zero quorum requirement?

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org