Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Having two members of a household on the Board

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Aug 15, 2019, at 2:18 PM, David Clements and Evan Richardson via 
> Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> Two households each have two members on the Sun Circle.   
> We have heard concerns that it is a bad idea to allow more than one member of 
> a household to serve on the Board/Sun Circle at a time.  We could change our 
> bylaws to allow only one Board member from each household.  

We have done this, I think a couple of times. I've objected because it 
automatically reduces diversity. Even though couples don’t agree on everything, 
they look out the same windows and are usually close to the same age. They also 
tend to either not disagree with each other in public, reducing diversity in 
discussion, or to disagree in ways that make others in the room uncomfortable. 

Then when we allowed it anyway, we discovered another problem — they both went 
out of town at the same time. Quorum became difficult. 

The other problem is if the household has children — one of the two will start 
staying home with the kids after 2-3 meetings. They say they won’t but they do.

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