Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Populating Committees (Circles)

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

We have two elements to our Workshare, namely committee work and defined
tasks that belong to a committee. For example, the Mowing Coordinator task
is under our Grounds Stewardship Committee and the Piano Tuning coordinator
is under the Common House Committee.

We populate the committees and the task positions in the same way, ie,
people sign up for them with a one-year commitment at our annual Workshare
Signup event, or during the year if a position ends up vacant . People
often stay on a committee or in a task position for several years, although
committee chairs typically choose to rotate out after 3 years.

Committees are required to have at least 3 members, and so far they have
been able to meet that requirement. I'm not aware of the kinds of problems
you asked about.

Committee decisions are preferably made by consensus, but there's a voting
option if they can't come to a unanimous decision. However, I can't recall
if that's ever been done. We delegate a lot of decision-making authority to
the committees, but we require advance notification to the community for
major decisions, and any 3 households can ask to have a committee's
decision moved up to be a plenary decision, as a checks-and-balances
measure to ensure that we haven't over-delegated authority to the
committees. That hasn't been invoked in years, but it's there if needed,
like the provision permitting non-unanimous decision making.

    Muriel @ Shadowlake Village