Present: Dave, Catya, Andey, Lisa, Adam, Joa, Zach, Kai, San, Sarah, Scott, Michael, Dwight, Steph

1. Chris ScottHansen: Next steps are to talk with developers, town planners, etc., and land search; Chris is available in October. We missed his recent time availability for phone calls from California. Discussion about whether we should try to call town planners ourselves. Straw poll: Money aside, do people want to hire Chris? Mostly yes; a few reservations that have to do with timing, money, and numbers of equity households. Presuming that he can do phone time and then a visit, and that we can get the money together, do we want to move forward with hiring Chris? See decision #2. Scott remained reserved, but did not block. His reservation was about not having enough equity members to buy land at this time.

2. Money

Do we, as a group, feel ready to volunteer enough money to fund Chris’ next visit, or do we need to do more membership work so that we can get the members to pay for Chris?

Cat proposes that we adopt Chris’ outline of early money incentives. For the next visit, we need $4,000 plus expenses. Straw poll conducted on raising the money. Incentives question: Chris laid out a plan. Are we comfortable enough to adopt it now, or should some folks review it over the next few weeks? See decision #3.

3. LLC

Good protection, reasonably easy to do, unsure of when to spend the money on it. Dwight’s lawyer who did his LLC did a good job & for a fixed price. Need good set of bylaws before doing LLC, task for legal committee. See decision #4.

4. Money Timeline:

Budget and the timeline for when we have to pay various professionals. Discussion of when do adopt preliminary budget. Idea of doing comparables first, and perhaps upping the land cost estimate. See decision #5.

5. Towns:

Trying to figure out what order to we call towns in, we will send around tallies of what people think. Andey raised concern, and a desire to put Ashland on the list. Does anyone object to adding Ashland to the list? No. Okay to add Ashland. If there are people who would like to add towns, could you say something about why that town should be considered? Ashland is to south and west of Framingham. Parts are very close to SVS, parts have very good rt. 9/pike access. Question raised of adding Littletown. People promise to do exercise as quickly as possible, keeping in mind they can veto towns.

6. Marketing:

Andey passed out full-page ad for SVS Journal for people to edit. Andey suggests doing a standing half-page add, etc. Edits offered to Andey. Agreed to defer Mothering Magazine ad until a little later. Discussion of handing out the budget at orientations.

What does it mean to be associate, full members, etc. We have a hard-copy sample of a membership agreement from Chris SH. Need to have people working on it, compare them, etc. Should there be dues? How much? Scaled? Definition of membership. Chris suggested we use "member" to refer only to people who are in the LLC, and use "associate" for others. Kai will take charge of it, with help from Sarah and Catya.

Thoughts on how we want to approach this question: How do we want to structure our membership in terms of associates vs. equity members? How do we want to handle it?

Answers:

Andey: Fantasy of standard categories, but special category for "equity members" who are currently members of the group who can’t get on a group-directed schedule.

Cat: Won’t have anyone who can put 5% down this instant. So no one can become an equity member tomorrow. Should put a schedule together to figure out when we need how much money, put various levels and rates of giving for different families, so that everyone has their 5% in by the start of construction. How much money do you have to have in to be someone who decides on the land purchase?

Dave: Has a hard time tying membership to immediate cash contributions. Once legal entity is formed, there is a LLC member, but membership status doesn’t need to depend only on whether people have paid yet. Associate is someone who isn’t fully committed to the end product.

Michael: We need 5% two months before construction. This is a lot of money to put down as risk capital. Would like to see some way of fiddling membership definition so it can be lower than 5%, ie. members and junior members. Doesn’t help us legally to have members who are not putting up a lot of money.

Adam: Feels unclear, seems to come a lot down to money.

Scott: We should separate financial and emotional commitments to the groups. We function on consensus, and can get input from anyone we want. When the big cash call comes, there will be a legal separation, people owners of LLC put up money, but there doesn’t have to be an emotional separation between the two groups of people. Scott doesn’t think we need to tie in participation in membership and in the group to how much money people put in.

Kai: Households we need to purchase land will need to put in more than 5% each to start construction. We are in a bind with committed people without any money. Would want something similar to Andey that those of us who are putting in little money but lots of commitment should count as full members, but feels this is risky.

San: Thinks about this from emotional side. Doesn’t want to get to the point where her family doesn’t get to participate in major decision because they don’t have money today. But we have said when we have full members that only full members can block consensus . . .

Cat: Remember we are making rules for us, not for any other group of people.

Scott: We could consider another option, undertake a project that would be less expensive than what we are thinking so far. (Dave interjects that this is a grenade.) Scott continues giving an example of taking this existing group, buying a large house and adding on to create something else.

Dave: Regarding land purchase, he understands that it may not be a huge amount immediately to hold the land. Purchase averages many months, inspections, etc. Various other members interject disagreement with this assertion.

San and Kai will do every other month, need volunteers for who could pick up the other times.

What do we do with people after orientation? Idea of a half-hour Q&A session before business meetings. May want to do something more extensive later on.

Proposal: Try doing it for a month or two, meetings start at 3:00 and the first half hour is Q & A. Did not pass. Continue discussion on email