Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Quorum

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

Our Committees mostly have plenary-adopted Charters, although some of these are 
little vague and long in the tooth.  The real problem, in my opinion, is that 
in our flattened hierarchy ideal of direct democracy, our Committees have no 
Chairs and no members.  Anyone can announce an open meeting of Committee X, and 
if any three or more households show up, then the meeting is legitimate.

To be fair, most Committees have a core set of regular participants, all 
self-volunteered and self-appointed.  But any member — including someone who 
just moved in yesterday — can come to any Committee meeting, and speak, or 
propose, or block.  Under these circumstances, Cornerstone is very wary of 
allocating resources or authority to a Committee.  Except for the meeting 
called Repair, which has (nearly) unrestricted access to the entire reserve 
fund.

All of which seems to me like self-inflicted wounds.

RPD

Sent from my iPad

On May 12, 2013, at 11:04 PM, Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:

> 
> I wonder if we have a different idea about what belongs at the committee 
> level. I assume your committees have defined domains as ours do. Committee 
> members make the first-cut determination whether something they're 
> proposing can be handled at the committee level or should be developed and 
> shepherded by the committee as a plenary consensus issue.
> Maybe just knowing that 3 or more household could ask to move a decision 
> from a committee up to the plenary (which is possible but hasn't happened) 
> keeps the committees honest, as it were.
> 
> Individual members or informal small groups can bring a proposal to the 
> plenary as well, but after years of finding rough going for such proposals 
> (which often are not well prepared and not aired out in advance for 
> community feedback), this doesn't happen as often as it once did.
> 
> Frankly, also, now that many of us are going on 12 years in residence, many 
> members have burned out on governance and only perk up when something big 
> comes along. It's governance by "I trust those of you who care enough to 
> work on committees and attend plenary meetings to do the right thing" more 
> than it is self-governance, I think.
> 
> Why is it that your members feel so queasy about your committees?
> 
>    Muriel