Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Members and rentals (was Short-term Rentals)

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

Thanks for all the detail regarding your  community budgeting.  For me, the 
most interesting part is that the HOA portion is co-joined to Camelot, and you 
have in effect have a bicameral legislature.  Thus your budget bill goes 
through both a House and a Senate, each with its own consensus process, Yes?  
This strikes me as fairly unique in the coho world, and might warrant more 
discussion.

Also of interest is the rigorous process you follow to set and share the 
“optional” or “discretionary” part of the budget.

RPD



On Nov 6, 2013, at 10:03 AM, Diana Carroll <dianaecarroll [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> Hi Ann.
> 
> As I said, our HOA budget is pretty much focused on the things all condos
> need.  Our main expenses are: insurance; plowing; maintaining our septic
> system and water supply (we have an onsite water treatment facility);
> maintaining our common house and unit exteriors and critical site features
> such as roadways and drainage; waste disposal; and of course building up
> reserves for these things.  We also have smaller line items such as
> accounting, legal fees, permits, that kind of thing.
> 
> Our cohousing budget is smaller, but still substantial.  (We are right in
> the middle of our budgeting process so it's all fresh in my mind!)  This
> budget includes: purchase and maintenance of common resources beyond those
> required for basic legal/safety requirements -- lawn mowers, garden hoses,
> etc; furnishings of the common areas such as couches for the living room,
> dining room tables, movie projector, playground equipment, ping pong table,
> etc; community garden and landscaping (the kind that's about looks rather
> than maintaining the health of the site); money for social events, meetings
> and workshops on topics like conflict resolution and facilitation; cable TV
> and internet service for the common house; maintaining our hot tub; kitchen
> stuff (not food -- that's part of the "meals" budget which is separate and
> self-funding...but pots and pans and whatnot); basic common house supplies
> like toilet paper, pens and paper and such; childcare for our meetings and
> workshops; propane for our kitchen stoves and fireplace.
> 
> Our HOA budget doesn't have much wiggle room.  We share a physical site
> with another cohousing group (Camelot), and the biggest expenses are shared
> between the groups.  How the HOA fees (technically called "assessments")
> are apportioned is a matter of legal record: each unit has a percentage of
> "beneficial interest" in the condominium and is assessed that percentage of
> the budget.  Like every condo everywhere, this is required and if someone
> doesn't pay we could put a lien on their home or take other legal action.
> (Which we have never had to do, thank goodness!)
> 
> Our cohousing budget can vary as much as our members want.  The way we do
> this is various teams submit requests for what they'd like to have in the
> budget for next year, and the Trustees (usually me :-) ) assembles that
> into a budget proposal.  This then gets discussed over the course of a
> couple meetings (and in email) until we think it reflects our community
> wishes and priorities.  Then we consense on it and figure out what the
> average amount per month per household is to meet that budget.  THEN each
> member household "pledges" a monthly amount toward it, with the minimum bid
> being 5% of the average (last year the monthly average was $72, the minimum
> bid was $3.50).  If the pledges don't cover the budget, we ask people to
> re-bid; if they still aren't enough to cover it, we start cutting items
> from the budget to bring it down to the amount of money we have.  (We
> haven't actually had to do that yet, but we are prepared for it every
> year...this, too, would be a consensus based process.)
> 
> To give a sense of scale, last year our annual HOA budget was $140,000
> (divided over 34 units), and our annual cohousing budget was $24,000
> (divided over 35ish member households).
> 
> If you want more detail, contact me offline and I'd be happy to show your
> our budget.
> 
> As to your observation that coho groups spend way more money on septic
> systems than conflict resolution workshops...that's true, because those
> things cost more.  In my experience, "community" isn't expensive in
> dollars...but  very expensive in terms of time and energy.  And those, for
> better or worse, are not things we formally "budget".   Adding $40K a year
> to our budget for workshops would not, I believe, make our community that
> much healthier -- it would just make us sick of workshops.  (But then, I
> don't have a lot of faith in formal training in "soft skills"...our
> community support team and facilitation team members surely feel
> differently.  I spend a lot of my time at workshops rolling my eyes.)
> 
> Diana
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