Minutes of Mosaic Commons General Meeting
Sunday, November 5th, 2000, 3:30-6:30pm

Location: Parmenter Health Services in Wayland
Meeting facilitator: San & Cat
Notetaker: Stephanie
Present: Dave, Cat, San, Kai, Steph and Ben Blum

Decisions:

1. Secretarial and Treasurer role should only be filled by Associate Members.

Action Items:

• Cat and Dave will talk to Guin about doing more sitting.
• Cat will bring the brochure from Northern Vermont Cohousing to the next meeting.
• Cat will check with Chris to see if he needs zoning for all the towns or not, or what sort of paperwork we need from the towns.
• Cat will check with Pat re: babysitting for the Tuesday night at homeport
• Cat will enable moderation on the egroups mosaic-interest list.
• Cat will follow-up with local newspapers to find out if our orientation ads actually ran.
• Cat will get that information from Andey about when to run the ad in SV Journal again.
• Cat will make a link to the national list mail archives on egroups from the site.
• Cat will update the members pages.
• Cat: Ask Andey about faxing to newspapers regarding free: announcements
• Cat will bring tea to the next meeting.
• Cat will bring a candle to the next meeting to do a ritual.
• Dave or Cat: Ask Lisa and Andey if the ad in the Sudbury Valley Journal is going to run for more than one issue.
• Dave will do the search functions for the web site.
• Dave will do the traffic reports for the web site
• Dave will put Cat on the 'info' mail alias.
• Dave will put San on the info mail alias
• Dave will work on comparables ASAP
• Dave needs to pull the action items off the last Minutes.
• Kai will pick up the key to Parmenter next time, with fallback to Dave if they can't do it.
• Kai will write up some of the things that Chris presented which will be used at the meeting with Dwight.
• San says she will do the agenda for the next meeting.
• San will do a one time mail sending to her food co-op list.
• San will take over arranging babysitting
• San will talk to Zoe about being a regular babysitter.
• Steph (or Dwight) will write a Letter to the Editor of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette as a follow-up to their article on Cohousing. .
• Steph will ask Lisa for the files that Lisa has for the Secretary position.
• Steph will research alternate meeting locations by this weekend.
• All will think about date/time/event for our December social. Need to plan this ASAP as that month book up quickly for everyone.

Discussion:

Upcoming Events:

Meetings: Nov 19, Dec 3, 16

Orientations: Dec 10

Social Event: Nov 12 at Dwight and Steph's

Discussions:

The meeting opened with a discussion with our visitor, Ben, who was at an orientation a while back. Ben asked for some background on the current families.

Check In

Cat suggests "What book do you want to read, and plan to, but haven't gotten around to it yet?". We went around and did so.

Committee reports

Coordinating

• San vows to do the agenda for the next meeting

Secretary

• Things that need to be done: minutes, decision log, action items.
• Steph, with help with Dave, will do secretary stuff. Dave will take notes, Steph will do post-process stuff.
• Ben suggests some sort of auto-organization function inside Word that'll associate things to various action items, etc. Steph will take a look at it, talk with Cat about it as well.
• San asks about other 'secretarial' things, such as copies of the signed agreements, renewals for agreements, etc etc. Steph will ask Lisa for the files that Lisa has.
• Cat will update the webpage Decision log - will work with Steph on it.

Marketing and Membership

• Introductory meeting next week Nov 12th. We're not sure if Chris will be around for that meeting.
• Dave will put Cat on the 'info' mail alias.
• Dave will put San on the info mail alias.
• Cat has sent a -lot- of mail around regarding it.
• Steph says the Telegram has an article about the Vermont Cohousing group. Steph will dig up some more information and let us know. San suggests a 'letter to the editor' follow-up pointing to our group. Steph (or Dwight) will do it.
• Cat has a brochure from Northern Vermont Cohousing, but forgot to bring it to the meeting, will bring it next time.
• Steph says she heard from Ben and from Anne Brunner. Ben made it to the meeting, not sure why Anne did not come.
• Cat is concerned that the last Introductory meeting was a no show, and is concerned that the newspaper ad may not have gone in, or was ineffective. She'll follow up.
• San has offered to do a one time mail sending to the food co-op list.
• Is the ad in the Sudbury Valley Journal going to run for more than one issue - ask Lisa and Andey.
• The ad in the SV Journal cost $25, we should run it again, question is when.
• Andey had been faxing to newspapers regarding free: announcements. Cat will get that information from Andey.
• Steph commits to really digging around about finding meeting locations.
• Kai will pick up the key to Parmenter next time, with fallback to Dave if they can't do it.
• Ben points out that a recent conversation on the interests list really turned him off to the group, because he didn't want to get a lot of mail. Cat will enable moderation on the list to prevent that sort of thing.

Diversity

• Got information on advertising in the Senior times. Suggest that we hold off until after Chris's report.

Website

• Dave will do the search functions.
• Dave will do the traffic reports.
• Members pages need to be updated - Cat.
• Make a link to the national list mail archives on egroups from the site - Cat.

Finance

• Kai has been -reallllly- busy, and has no updates (understandably).
• Steph will tell Dwight to remind Kai about a meeting next week?
• Kai will be writing up some of the things that Chris presented which will be used at the meeting.

Affordability

• Cat brings up the point that without Lisa and Andey involved, we run the risk of losing site of our financial bounds. San is very interested in it, but doesn't have the resources... but Dwight is -very- interested in it (this via Steph).

Treasurer

• Cat is holding the place, and is hoping that Sarah will come up and take on the role. Steph brings up reservations of having someone who is not involved in the monthly dues cycle taking up the position of treasurer. Decision: Secretarial and Treasurer role should only be filled by Associate Members.

Land / Site

• Dave is has not done Comparables yet. Will do so soon.
• Michael has agreed to get the Zoning papers for every town, but is not sure that's what we want right now. Cat will check with Chris to see if he needs zoning for all the towns or not, or what sort of paperwork we need from the towns.

Professionals

• Chris' visit. Arrives on the 12th at 10am, we're trying toget him to come to the orientation and / or the social afterwards. Cat has asked Kelly for what meetings we should plan... He will be here Monday and Tuesday working on the questions for us. We suggest a 6pm Tuesday meeting at Homeport to review.
• Cat can be available if necessary for questions from Chris. Steph offers to help too.
• Steph is going to check with Dwight to make sure Dwight and Kai's meeting doesn't conflict with our potential meeting with Chris.

Legal

• No discussion

Other

Babysitting:

• We need babysitting for the Tuesday night at homeport - Cat will check with Pat.
• San will take over arranging babysitting
• San brought up a concern that Pascal and Emma are the only kids at the meetings.
• San will talk to Zoe about being a regular babysitter.
• Cat and Dave will talk to Guin about doing more sitting.

Membersbip policy

• Deferred until folks have a better handle on what they an work with. Next meeting is scheduled to have vision statement discussion, so this issue is bumped 2 meetings out.

Kynvi's decision

• We discussed our sadness as a group over their decision to pull-back and our hopes that they will return. Expressed concern over the dwindling numbers of committed people and how that makes it more difficult to get things done and keep the process moving forward.

Agenda items for the next meeting

• Think about scheduling for social events for December now, because the scheduling is so rough. December 16th or 17th, day or evening, was suggested as a possibility. People are encouraged to look at their schedules and come back with ideas.

Wrap-up

• Cat wants to pursue having a symbolic thing like Chris had talked about - a stack of issues resolved, perhaps under a candle in the middle of the table.

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Last modified: October 3, 2001