Minutes of Mosaic Commons General Meeting
Sunday, December 3, 2000, 3:30-6:30pm

Location: Home of San and Kai, Cambridge, MA
Meeting facilitator: San
Notetaker: Stephanie
Present: Steph, Rosa, San, David, Catya, Dave, Dwight, Kai, Annie, Brokk, Anna

Decisions:

Agreed to pay San and Kai's babysitter the full $40 for babysitting tonight.

We decided to revise some of the wording on the Vision Statement. The changes are:

1. "group decision making" has been changed to "consensus decision making"
2. "a community that welcomes and supports diversity " has been changed to "a community that welcomes, respects, and supports diversity"
3. "ability" changed to "ability and disability"
4. "adequate centralized play areas" changed to "centralized play areas"
5. "in the metro-west area (west of Boston)" changed to "west of Boston"

This revises the vision statement to read:

To create and live in a residential community (20-35 households) west of Boston based on the cohousing style of living including:

• a balance of shared, common space and private homes,
• a common house integral to community activities,
• housing design and development that supports community living,
• child-friendly environment with centralized play areas (inside and outside),
• minimal impact of automobiles in and around our living and recreational areas,
• consensus decision-making,
• environmental consciousness,
• social responsibility, and
• financial responsibility.

To create housing that is affordable to individuals and families with a range of incomes.

To create a community that welcomes, respects, and supports diversity of age, race, religion, sexual orientation, ability and disability, political persuasion, educational philosophy, family structure and financial status.

Our intention is to support each other and embrace the need for extended family creating a healthy interdependence.

Action Items:

• David will reframe the child-friendly/adult-friendly proposal and put it out to the group on email so that we can discuss it more clearly as a group.
• Cat will take on the initial draft of the welcoming statement
• Cat will follow up with Andey for Fax Numbers.
• Cat will send the membership timeline email from Kelly to the rest of the MC members.
• Cat will talk to her lawyer about bylaws
• Dave still needs to do comparables
• San will follow-up with Zoe about babysitting
• San will follow-up on professionals for a process workshop
• Steph will call and reserve Parmenter through March
• Steph will follow-up with Lisa for secretarial records
• Steph to follow-up with second half of orientation list
• Dwight will draft the proposal for the incentive and cash call policy for the next meeting
• Dwight will get developers names that he spoke to in CA to Chris
• Dwight will do a letter to the editor of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette about cohousing
• Dwight will take responsibility for picking up the key from Parmenter every Friday before our business meetings.
• ALL need to come prepared to discuss the creation of bylaws

Discussion:

Opening activity: Tell one thing about you that the rest of the group doesn't know.

Agenda:

1. Review minutes from last meeting

• decided to wait until the next meeting to approve the minutes from the last meeting

2. Current Agenda

• approved agenda
• Agreed that the main agenda items are the vision statement and possibly the incentive structure if we have time.

3. Chris:

• We have not yet heard from Chris.
• Cat got a fax from Chris but it was blank. She needs to let them know that it came through blank. This fax was probably his current contract with us.
• She's asked them if we can have the information that we've hired him to do by Monday/Tuesday with the full report by Friday the 8th.
• Cat got verbal information from Kelly that the way they do month to month contracts is to decide in advance how many days a month we want to hire him and they would bill it out according to the days we've hired him for: i.e. no reduced fee for a month to month contract. We may revisit this with them as this is not what we were anticipating to hear.

4. Vision Statement:

• Cat has our existing vision statement and an exercise from Chris' site on how to go about creating vision statements. We did not use the exercise. She also brought two examples of vision statements from two other cohousing groups: Puget Ridge (PR) and Trilliam Hollow (TH).
• Dwight read our existing vision statement:
• San likes the current vision statement and doesn't want to revamp it totally.
• Cat and Rosa brought up the phrasing of our current vision statement. The Pugent Ridge vision statement Cat read has a different "voice." Steph likes the way their vision statement phrases their committment to consensus.
• Brokk points out that PR's vision statement is has a better feel... and ours is a plan of statement and very businesslike.
• David raised a concern about making sure that diversity really is welcomed, supported and accepted.
• Kai likes the brevity and clarity of it
• Rosa wonders what we are trying to DO with the vision statement. Are we trying to get specific with this? Seems like we are being a little scattered.
• San answered Rosa's question with answer from Chris' web site: talked about the purpose of a vision statement.
• David raises question about the child centered-ness of the community - wants to know if we should consider having "adult friendly" - i.e. child free zone - area in the community. This initiated a lengthy discussion about the value of children in the community and the feeling among several members that children are people and should not be discriminated against.
• Steph expressed her feeling that the common area is for the community at large, children included and that if community members want to be away from children and want privacy that that's what private residences are for.
• Brokk pointed out that there are ways to develop the community that respect people's desire to not interact or hear children all the time and that they should be able to get away from children if they so desire.
• Anna pointed out that she likes the wording "welcomes and supports" - but said that the word "support" can be ambiguous. Perhaps using the word "respect" would be more descriptive? Perhaps adding the word?
• Kai asked if we should consider "quiet times" for the community. Said this isn't a vision statement issue, but something for future consideration for the policy.
• Annie pointed out two things she liked from the PR and Trillium Hollow vision statements: the use of the words Friendship, sharing, learning, health, and cooperation. Also, in the PR one, she liked the phrasing "disability" instead of our phrasing "ability" because many people aren't aware that "ability" means differently abled.
• Anna shared that she feels the phrasing "we come together in friendship" doesn't fit as well for her... Annie disagrees.. she likes the phrasing "we come together in friendship"
• Rosa points out you can get that welcoming feel in other ways rather than using "friendship"
• Cat proposed that we add a welcoming section to this and that we visit some details within the statement and that we can probably hit some of the details today but that we hold the welcoming statement for the future.
• All agreed about to proposal. We decided to break and come back with specific vision statement revision proposals after the break.

Break

5. Proposed items to be revised in the vision statement:

• Steph: consensus
• Rosa: none
• Kai: Welcome, respect and support in the diversity line
• Dwight: Agrees with Kai and in favor of an introduction paragraph that is about the why's
• Annie: none
• Cat: Ability and disability, Consensus, and "adequate centralized play areas" would like to delete adequate, and change Metrowest (west) to just "west of Boston"
• David: child friendly/adult friendly...
• San: 20-35 household range?

6. Discussion of proposals:

• Consensus: discussed whether to make it explicit that children are included in the consensus process. Cat proposed a change from "group decision making" to "consensus decision making" - Approved by consensus.
• Diversity: Proposal to change wording to "welcomes, respects, and supports" - Approved by consensus.
• Ability/Disability: Proposal to change it to "ability and disability" - Approved by consensus.
• Adequate centralized play areas: Proposal to strike "adequate" from statement. - Approved by consensus.
• Proposed a change to"west of Boston" instead of "metrowest"- Approved by consensus.
• David proposed a revision to reframe vision language to specify adult-friendly as well as child friendly language. A specific proposal was never made and there was not adequate time to debate this fully. Dwight suggested that David take responsibility for reframing the question and putting it out the group on email so that we can discuss it more clearly as a group and that it come up on the agenda at the next possible opportunity. David agreed to do this.*** David Action Item
• 20-35 households: Cat proposed that this be changed to 20-30 as she feels it would be better to be consistent with the rest of the website's information. Dwight, Annie, and Steph are concerned about locking ourselves into 20-30. Kai points out that our initial budget actually has 28 units and that by changing the vision statement to 20-30 it would more accurately reflect the ideal of our group. Consensus could not be achieved. Further discussion needed. Cat proposed that we revisit this again at the same time as the child friendly language.
• Welcoming statement: Proposal to discuss this at the same meeting as the other two tabled items. All agreed. ***Cat will take on the initial draft of the welcoming statement.
• Cat expressed appreciation for everyone work on this issue.

7. Misc.

• Cat asked what is an appropriate time frame for getting action items out to group. Stephanie agreed to a three day goal to get action items out to the rest of the group.

8. Action Items Reports:

• Incentive structure - Dwight still needs to do.
• Review mission statement - done today
• Membership structure: we will review this on Dec. 17th and discuss it in depth in January
• Concord newspaper: Cat and Dave are not getting the paper yet, but will if we decide on Concord
• Link to nv.cohousing - not up yet
• New flyers - Cat has new flyers and has dates but no location, will put the specific towns on there when we hear from Chris. Changed the wording .. "Do you know your neighbors? We want to build a place where you will." Right now it says we are meeting at Parmenter and will leave it at Parmenter through March.
• Location: Steph explained the research she's done for location. We've decided to stay at Parmenter through March. Steph will call and reserve Parmenter through March, 12-7:30 on the 3rd Sunday of each month.
• Babysitting - San did get babysitter. Question of paying her? How much to pay? She charged $12/hr - total would be $40. Proposals: group to pay for whole cost of babysiting - Approved.
• Talk to Zoe - San did this and asked if she was still interested. Zoe said she would think about it. San needs to call her.
• More information on professionals (San) - for process workshops. Haven't done this yet. There is the possibility of us getting together with other Boston area groups too but this shouldn't replace our desire to do a group process workshop. ***Still to f/u
• Steph did f/u on meeting location and First Connections
• Steph did not f/u with Lisa..***still to do
• Steph to f/u with second half of orientation list
• Dwight still to draft the proposal for the inentive and cash call policy
• Dwight still to get developers names to Chris that he spoke to in CA
• Dwight still to do a letter to the editor

9. Committee reports:

Marketing:

• Hopefully we'll have a town from Chris soon!
• Cat doesn't expect to do any advertising for this upcoming orientation.
• Cat has action item to f/u with Andey for Fax Numbers.
• Cat will send the membership timeline email from Kelly to the rest of the MC members. Helpful for marketing
• Cat would like to consider the possibility of changing meeting times if Brokk and Anna seem serious about getting involved. San says that she'd be willing to consider it, but it would be difficult - nap time is a factor, weekend getaways is a factor.

Website:

• Cat created the private discussion list.
• Dave has set up some reporting on the MC website so Cat should be able to have some stats for us soon.
• Cat is working on a search tool.
• Status of BCN: Stella is no longer running this site.

Finance:

• No treasurer's report
• Cat paid Chris $2000 for this current contract - status is that Dave and Cat are covering it now but we can put in $$ if we wish.

Land/Site

• Dave still needs to do comparables

10. Agenda for next meeting:

• Incentive structure is priority for the next meeting
• Chris' report
• Bylaws - Cat needs to talk to Lawyer, - we will compare the lawyer's template to the other bylaws
• ***ALL need to come prepared to discuss the creation of bylaws***

11. Process review ended the meeting.

• Discussed the possibility of sharing the responsibility of facilitating the meeting. Dwight volunteered to facilitate the next meeting.

Upcoming dates:

• Dec. 9: Social at Dwight and Steph's in Boylston at 4:00
• Dec. 10: Introductory Meeting in Concord (3:00-5:00)
• Dec. 17: Business meeting at Parmenter (3:30-6:30) with potluck to follow
• Jan. 7: Business meeting at Parmenter (3:30-6:30) with potluck to follow
• Jan. 21: Business meeting at Parmenter (3:30-6:30) with potluck to follow

Contact us! * Email info or webmaster

Last modified: October 3, 2001