Cohousing-L Mailing List: Budget Season & Consent

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

(Every night I go to sleep thinking “Tomorrow, I need to start the day by 
writing in my blog and on the Coho-US site instead of dispersing ideas into the 
clutter of email. And every morning I wake up and respond to email. Mmmm.)

Todays observation was in response to a thread on the community email lists 
about a request for replacing worn out kneepads for weeding on workdays and 
whether the gardening team wants kneepads. It is “their" budget. The team has 
apparently not heard this need because people just buy their own.

The road to organization is littered with silos. Empty silos.

While it seems neat and tidy to organize budgets by teams and their requests, 
that can easily become a narrow and exclusive path.

The point of consent decision-making is that it forces the inclusion of 
everyone affected by a decision into the making of that decision. Not just in 
the final choice, but in the process of determining the final choices.

The most effective solutions are based on the widest range of information. 
Information gathering requires inclusion.

A team of 3-5 people may lead the daily provisioning of the community but the 
community is the purpose, not the team. A team can't do an excellent job if the 
other community members don’t participate in the defining of the desirable and 
possible choices.

The wheat may be preserved in the silo but if it only benefits the silo, the 
whole point of having it is lost. The silo will be abandoned.

Sharon
——— 
Sharon Villines, Editor & Publisher
Affordable Housing means 30% of household income
Cohousing means self-developed, self-governed, self-managed
http://affordablecohousing.com