Second September Meeting

September 25, 2016

Date/Time: 9/25/16, 3:00-6:00pm

Location: Jennifer & Zane Rockenbaugh’s house

Attendees

Howie & Linda

Celeste

Dale

Karen M

Jennifer & Zane

Intros

Everyone introduced him or herself and shared why he/she was there.

  • We should be living in community.
  • We hold a common vision of people building their own houses but with shared space.
  • We favor a multi-generational approach.

Minutes

  • It was suggested we accept the minutes, but is there anything on there that needs to be added to the Action Log?
  • Questions from the last minutes were unanswered, so Howie answered them.
  • Where is everybody? There was a great deal of interest from the Conscious Cohousing group, but none of them made it. It didn’t get posted to their group, so maybe they didn’t all know.

Action Item – Put someone in charge of communications about meeting times so that it gets posted to other groups and people get reminders. Dale was nominated to do this.

Decision Making

  • Howie discussed consensus and how it works in Susie’s cohousing group.
  • We shared thoughts from those of us who have operated with a consensus model. We had concerns about informal versus formal decisions and whether they all need to be made by the same kind of consensus. We also discussed trying to make sure that new members don’t try to reverse the decisions already made. Nonetheless, new members can bring ideas to be heard by the group. Some decisions will be more quantifiable--we can look at data--and others are simply opinions. Susie’s group has some prime directives that influence their decisions; for example, increasing local wildlife was a directive, so cats weren’t allowed loose outside. We all want to make decisions that are best for the community.

Decision reached - We’re very interested in operating as a consensus-based organization, and we are interested in learning more and being trained in consensus decision making.

Board of Directors

  • Howie discussed wanting to have jobs or roles while still maintaining a sense of egalitarianism.
  • When we establish a formal LLC (which we want to do), there is a legal requirement to have those positions. You can write the document to say those roles serve at the will of the group and that the group can take the role away from a person if that person isn’t doing what the group wants.
  • For now, we’ll use the word chair to designate the person in charge of a group.
  • is a great website and full of great resources.

◦5-member board of managers work with architect and developers on general day-to-day decisions

Decisions reached – Howie will be the de facto facilitator; Zane will look into requirements to file as an LLC. For now, the board of directors will be Howie, Celeste and Zane. Karen will be the treasurer, and Jennifer serves as secretary.

Membership requirements

◦Howie says most groups do $100 to get in as well as a monthly fee, nonrefundable except if the whole project goes south. Then the money gets divided up by percentage of how much each person contributed.

◦Group discussed idea of raising the joining fee in the future because the current members will put in more legwork than members in the future.

◦What is the money for?

▪Cement commitment, hire experts, pay for legal fees and a bank account, and also to build trust with each other. We can decide exactly what to do with it.

▪Some members would prefer to use a credit union instead of a bank.

◦Other criteria for new membership often include a form to fill out, reading about cohousing, and a monthly pledge of hours to participate through meetings or work on your own. Group didn’t like the idea of paying less in dues for more hours worked. Also discussed having members who might be unable to contribute monthly hours due to age/ability/etc.

◦We’d like to have the WordPress site be the main repository for information for members. The Facebook site would be for marketing and things that we don’t need tracking or monitoring. We can then make the Facebook group public as along as we can remove members who start spamming us. We do need to take down the files in the Facebook group that are personal.

Decisions reached –

  • Karen will look into starting an account at Amplify Credit Union (Sherry Shetfield) and see if we can set up automatic withdrawals.
  • We created a committee to draft a proposal for membership. Karen will chair the committee, Jennifer will be on the committee, and Celeste and Zane will help research how other groups set up membership and give that to the committee.

◦Questions we had – join per household or member, need to look at fees, voting structure, and hourly requirements

◦Needs to include a form getting commitment and contact information

◦Someone needs to be in charge of keeping up the database of members.

  • Our membership fees starting Oct 1st will be $100 for the initial joining, and monthly amounts will be $10. Every six months, the initial fee will increase by 6x the monthly fee for the previous six months.

Chart Upcoming Tasks

  • Jonathan Batista is doing his master’s thesis in cohousing. He wrote up some thoughts about both us and Austin Conscious Cohousing, of which Howie read some.

◦We need to start breaking everything down into little tasks and make sure they are completed.

◦Need to look at tools to use to track tasks and dependencies.

  • For now, we have enough tasks to complete before the next meeting. These don’t have significant dependencies.
  • Tasks we thought of that need to be accomplished:

◦Further develop vision statement

◦Open a bank account

◦Tour other cohousing places

◦Buy land outright, then let marketing and outreach take off (need a preliminary plan and then post land)

◦Build up website

◦Craft an elevator speech (part of marketing) which is immediately understandable and accessible and lasts 30 seconds.

◦Form a land committee to search, evaluate, present to everyone else

◦Choose initial developer

◦Decide if and how people could build their own house

◦Figure where any bank money will go if we fold

◦Assess our financial strength

◦Add our group to cohousing.orgdirectory

Action items – Zane will look at tools we can use to chart tasks and dependencies.

Next Meeting Date

Tuesday October 11th at 6:30pm at Terraras Branch Library

Decision Log

◦We’re very interested in operating as a consensus-based organization, and we are interested in learning more and being trained.

◦Our membership fees starting Oct 1st will be $100 for the initial joining, and monthly dues will be $10. Every six months, the initial fee will increase by 6x the monthly fee for the previous six months.

◦Howie will be the defacto facilitator, Karen will be the treasurer, and Jennifer serves as secretary.

◦Board of Directors: Celeste, Howie, Zane

◦Zane will look into requirements to file as an LLC.

◦Facebook will be for marketing and communicating with the public, but the main communication will be through the BohemiAustin.com WordPress site.

Action items

  • Jennifer

◦Fb live: Can people join us?

◦Make a list of decisions; note taker should star them so we can pull them out later

◦Membership committee with Karen

▪Questions we had – join per household or member, need to look at fees, voting structure, and hourly requirements

▪Needs to include a form getting commitment and contact information

▪Someone needs to be in charge of keeping up the database of members.

  • Zane

◦Set up the LLC – have a name ($40), certificate ($300)

◦Look at software for task and time management, preferably free

◦Research membership requirements for that committee

  • Karen

◦Start an account at Amplify Credit Union (Sherry Shetfield) and see if we can set up automatic drafting.

◦Membership committee with Jennifer

▪Questions we had – join per household or member, need to look at fees, voting structure, and hourly requirements

▪Needs to include a form soliciting commitment and contact information

▪Someone needs to be in charge of keeping up the database of members.

  • Celeste

◦Work on website

◦Research membership requirements for that committee

  • Linda

◦Submit three drafts for banner/logo for website

  • Dale

◦Craft an elevator speech; look at other communities

◦Communicate about meeting times so that such info gets posted to other groups and that people get reminders

  • Howie

◦Help craft our elevator speech; look at other communities

Agenda items for next meeting

  • Discussion about name
  • Membership committee presents
  • Zane presents on tools to use for charting tasks
  • Howie/Dale – elevator speech

Quote of the day – “I’m looking forward to living with you.”

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