Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: While we're on the subject of accounting . . .

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

I'm trying to recall what we charge for, might be missing something.
 1) CH laundry machines- because our CH was built about 1.5 years after the
greatest number of us moved in (lot development model), and some households
are a significant walking distance away from the CH, many of us have our
own washers & dryers. So only a subset of residents use the CH machines.
The fees are supposed to cover the cost of repair/replacement; keeping
track is on an honor system, and there's a workshare position devoted to
collecting. And yes, these machines break down far more often than people's
own machines.
 2) CH prepared meals- they have their own Meals Account bookkeeping system
with a workshare position for maintaining the account. We've never
contemplated incorporating the cost of the meals into regular HOA dues.
(Occasionally some of us have chipped in to create a benevolent fund to
allow people in financial straits to participate in the meals, which is not
the greatest solution but we couldn't figure out any other way to do it
under our system.)
 3) T1 line- Each household that participates (I think this is nearly but
not quite all of them) pays the same fee. A group of volunteers maintain
this service, which sometimes requires physical labor to dig trenches to
repair or upgrade cables, and it's a workshare task to collect the fee.

That's all I can think of....
   Muriel at Shadowlake Village, Blacksburg, VA
   where one house is for sale, see our website