Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: meeting minutes

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Sep 12, 2015, at 6:53 AM, Fred-List manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> I'm curious how folks feel about minutes from meeting teams that are
> circulated to a whole community that contain a disparaging remark about
> another community member?

Totally not the work of a team. And certainly not helpful to anyone.

>  It's been argued by
> some here that minutes are minutes and they need to contain everything

This is exactly what minutes are not. Minutes record decisions and give enough 
background to understand the decision. 

The decision not to make a decision is also a decision and should be recorded 
along with an explanation.

If a team wants to keep transcripts, it should hire or train a court reporter 
and record all statements. Do it right. You can’t really record “everything” 
that was said otherwise. And then you will also need a video recording to 
transcribe all the non-verbal remarks.

Minutes should be intelligent and enabling forward-movement/thinking. 

They should also not distribute inaccurate information if it can be avoided. If 
something inaccurate is said in the meeting and later found to be inaccurate or 
incomplete the secretary can note this in brackets rather than perpetuate 
inaccurate information and further confuse future actions.

[the actual date was changed after the meeting to ….]

[this decision was based on inaccurate information and will be revisited in the 
next meeting]

Anything published as part of the governance of the community should be 
purposeful. Disparaging remarks by one or even more can’t be said to be the 
view of the community.

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