Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The Whole Community

[Kathy Tymoczko (kathy.tymoczko]

In general, anything that doesn't obviously ("obviously" being the obvious
sticking point) belong specifically to one team and which seems to warrant
input or discussion by a larger group would come to the entire community.
Generally teams have pretty well-defined areas of responsibility and have
the power to make decisions within their scope of authority without coming
to the entire community although if something seems "big" or appears to
have the potential to affect everybody, the team may present the issue and
invite feedback from the larger group, while still making the decision
themselves.

More specifically, anything for which our bylaws require a decision by the
whole community, such as approving the annual budget or making a special
assessment or changing the bylaws, comes to the entire community.  Anything
that has large emotional impact for people, such as allowing renters to be
part of our decision-making process, comes to the entire community.
Community agreements (pet agreement, smoking agreement, etc.) come to the
entire community.

We also have monthly "plenary as potluck" meetings, which are not official
plenaries and where no decisions are made, where we have a potluck dinner,
with personal and Daybreak announcements, and then spend half an hour or so
discussing "table topics" or "table questions".  Some examples of this
include the issue of guest room usage, ways to conserve water and
electricity, beginning a discussion of our vision statement.  Generally we
have a notetaker at each table and the results go to the "sponsoring" team
or to the Steering Team for further processing.


On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] 
sharonvillines.com
> wrote:

>
>
> > belongs to an existing team, or if it's something that should be
> discussed by the entire
> > community at a future community meeting.
>
> How do you decide what should be discussed by the whole community and what
> delegated to a team.
>
> I’m concerned that fewer issues being discussed transparently and having
> many new people over the last few years, we are losing the sense of the
> whole community. Social events don’t bring people together like the pre-
> and after- move-in happiness and sheer panic.
>
> Yes, things are under control but the founding members are still holding
> much of that together. None of our teams are led by people who moved in
> after the first move-ins, although some have taken on individual projects
> after being here 2-4 years. And joined teams. This is true of all age
> groups, not just the parents or busy professionals or those in graduate
> school or “old.”
>
> Increasingly the founders are tired of the issues, the email, the
> discussions, and the new people don’t know what they are. We cancelled
> several meetings in the last year for lack of pressing agenda items. (Open
> discussion is not supported by our facilitators.)
>
> I’m really missing a crisis that requires everyone to pay attention.
>
> On a postive note we recently installed solar panels. In addition to
> supporting it as a good idea, was looking forward to the community getting
> excited about it and coming together in getting the latest news the way we
> used to about finally getting mailboxes or finding a snowplow company that
> actually showed up. No. It was routine. The working group put together a
> very good proposal, knew where the funds would come from without raising
> fees.
>
> The biggest hub-bub was around ~8 people having to give up parking spaces
> for ~6 weeks, and we had a borrowed parking lot right next door.
>
> So what the whole community should be involved in has become “not very
> much.”
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Kathy Tymoczko
Daybreak Cohousing <http://www.daybreakcohousing.org>
Portland, Oregon
765-307-1083