Minutes of Mosaic Commons General Meeting
May 6, 2001, 3:30-6:30pm

Location: New View Cohousing, Acton, MA
Facilitator: Dwight
Notetaker: Stephanie
Present: Steph, Dwight, David H, Kim, Kevin, Julie, Joyce, Sarah, Roxanne, Christie, Kai, San, Catya, Rosa, Dave, Nancy (from New View), Kathy, Jonathon

Decisions:

Action Items:

Coordinating

• Cat will follow-up with local MA groups to find out what they actually call their documents.
• Cat will send out directions to Maine to the email list
• Cat will talk to Kathy about philanthropic funding
• Cat will talk to Kelly ScottHanson to review the last consultation with Chris and discuss coordination for future work.
• Catya will follow up with Neshama re: PR article sometime in June
• Dwight pick up the key from parmenter
• San will add Sherrard, Joyce and Julie to the discussion list.
• San will coordinate babysitting for future meetings. Christie White's son may be available
• San will look up the very first meeting dates.
• San will put Operating Agreement Discussion on the retreat agenda
• San will put the affordable document sent to us by John Abrams on the agenda for the second meeting in June.
• Steph will start a conversation community building before the retreat on email

Secretary

• Steph will add to the minutes from April 22 that David H was present and Cat will update the website accordingly.
• Steph will get the old documents from Lisa

Membership and Marketing

• Cat - add Ken & Christine to the discussion list.
• Cat - at the bottom of the 'our members' page, there should be a link to the Membership document.
• Cat - signs & handouts for the intro meetings
• Cat - update trifold brochure
• Cat will check in with Brokk
• Cat will f/u with Montessori school flyers sent out.
• Cat will get together with Leslie re: marketing ideas
• Catya will draft a document similar to equity members for associate members
• Christie will research Massachusetts Teacher Retirement Assoc as a possible marketing outreach.
• Joyce will research local AARP chapters.
• Kai will write up examples of the items we need to have included in the Operating Agreement for our group to review at the next meeting.
• Rosa - get calling information from Steph regarding who was called back from intro meetings.
• San will do ad for the next SVS journal - the last journal of the season
• Steph will check in with Leslie to see how she's doing
• Steph will f/u with Annie

Finance

• Roxanne will take over this action item :Brokk volunteers to research those affordability facilitation groups.
• Dwight will give Roxanne Brokk's contact information so Roxanne can pick up the above action item.
• Dwight will send out email letting us know what the to-date contribution levels are for members.

Land/Site

• Catya & Dave need to finish getting the Concord report into electronic format and distribute it.
• Dave - continue to research sites and summarize to the group.
• Dave / Catya: Draft a fax with what we are looking for to send to realtors
• Dave will put a list of the criteria on the email list so that we know what we're looking for when we drive-by a site
• Dave will send email to the list with sites that need to be driven by and assessed
• Elisa will continue to research the Concord uranium concerns
• Roxanne will get fax numbers for realtors in Acton and Concord

Professionals

• Cat will find out where Chris is at on the document review
• Dwight will revise the CoO for the LLC with changes from Cat's lawyer, aside from listing membership, and send to the list before filing.
• San - Process workshop followup.
  

Discussion:

1- Opening
Brief introduction since we are so large today

2- Review and approve minutes
Minute addition from 4/22 David Heimann was present - please add to minutes***
Minutes approved with the addition

3- Review and approve agenda
Approved

4- Discuss recent tours

* Steph asked what the purpose of the discussion is. San says last year they discussed things they liked/disliked after tours last year. San says she liked that Island Cohousing was able to keep customization down. Dave liked that they were in a relatively densely populated area, yet they were in a wooded/secluded area. They were able to keep most of the trees which wasn't that expensive. LOVED the pond. Dave didn't like being THAT isolated - that they had to drive to everything. Loved the interiors of the house. Dave notes that their common house was smallish but Steph thought that it was very livable. Cat was impressed that they were able to make it affordable. Sherrard thought it was paradise. Joyce liked the pond. She thought they did a number of things well - liked that they kept the trees, made it feel like they'd been there for a long time. Liked what they did with the wood - recycled wood. Liked how they did the variations - "bump outs" - good to keep the customization down. Dwight liked the environmental values that they had - energy efficiency, composing toilets, very amazing attention to environmental care. Cat didn't like that their common house was at one end instead of in the middle.

* Today's tour of New View - Catya feels that this development is too spread out for her... less clustered than she would like to build. Dave feels there's more of a car focus than he would like to have - too many houses with garages. David H likes the location and the use they made of the landscape... points out that the customization here would be a problem in our community - need to keep the customization down!! Dwight points out that Island Cohousing had disincentives for customization. Rosa points out that it wasn't that they were doing it as a disincentive - if you wanted to do a customization then you had to pay for the cost of the upgrade PLUS the cost it adds to the project (gave sink example that cost $1800).

* Held a brief discussion about the cost of development - having set floor plans before building.

* Joyce liked the acoustical tiling in the common house. Roxanne says this feels more like a subdivision than cohousing. San would like us to design our community so that it allows people to expand later. Island Cohousing was nice because it allowed for a modular approach to expansion.

5- Review and approval of minutes from meetings with Chris ScottHanson

* Cat hasn't yet followed up with Kelly about our concerns about our preparedness. Perhaps he was checking in with us about if we're still on the same page. In the future we'd like to have a meeting with him in the very beginning rather than in the middle. We still need to find out where he is at on the document review

***. Cat would like to talk through the concerns with Kelly and wants our backing on this. Approved backing. Cat has been told by Kelly that his project management always comes first.

* Joyce asked who project managed Acton and Cambridge cohousing groups - Acton was internally managed, Cambridge ?

* Roxanne asked about someone local. Two issues is that there really isn't anyone local and that there isn't anyone locally that can do streamlined development.

* **Cat will talk to Kathy about philanthropic funding.

* ** Cat needs to change the top of minutes for April 18th on the website- it wasn't a general meeting

* Cat needs help with authoring the fax to realtors. Hoped that the notes would help, but it didn't really. Will come back to this at the end of the agenda.

6- Committee Reports/Action Items

Coordinating Committee:

* Cat has sent out a note to local groups but hasn't gotten the response she needed. Leave action item for her to coordinate the information she has received.
* Dwight needs to get the key to Cat on Friday, not Saturday for 5/13 meeting.
* Cat has f/u with Neshama. She wrote back and said we should check back in June**
* San and Cat will get together at Retreat
* Babysitting needs to go back to Coordinating Committee as we will not be asking Cassandra to babysit again. Christie White has a 13yo son who may be interested in babysitting in the future.

Secretary
* Steph has confirmed the dates with Parmenter through July.

Membership
* Had a great meeting with the Waldorf school. The SVS meeting was disappointing - but Linda Zimmerman said she has talked to several families who said they would.
* **San will do ad for the next SVS journal - the last journal of the season.
* Kathy asked if we would be interested in sending them a flyer for their area. Cat gave them a flyer to put up.
* Had a good turnout for the last intro meeting.
* **Steph check in with Leslie to see where she's at.
* Cat has talked to Brokk - he's still interested, but busy. **Cat will check in with him.
* Cat has question about Senior Centers - should we go door to door? Should we send flyers? (It was a list of assisted living communities, senior resources organizations.) Cat wants to target seniors who are coming up on retirement, trying to decide what they want to do, are living independently, etc. Important audience for us b/c getting empty nesters and diversity. What about advertising with local chapter of AARP. **Joyce will research this. Massachusetts Teacher Retirement is a good organization to check into as well. **Rosa or Cat will f/u. *Christie will bring in an MTA flyer.
* **Want to put Operating Agreement Discussion on agenda for retreat.
* **Steph f/u with Annie and mail back her accessibility book
* Cat recently sent out a flyer to Montessori schools. Cat wants to follow up with them and do some advertising.
* Kim suggests giving Caroline McCloy a call - Wright Tavern (UU Church). Their church has a flyer, but they might be a good place to hold an intro meeting. Would fit in with their mission statement in regards to affordable housing.

Finance
* Roxanne has expressed interest in this. **Dwight give Roxanne the contact information for Brokk so she can pick up his action item.
* Roxanne has noted in an Acton discussion list that there is some "hostility" toward clustered housing right now - wanting to be careful of over development. Encouraged Roxanne to forward websites to the email list when they relate to our housing search. David points out that we should make it a part of our PR effort to counter the misconception that clustered housing is high density.
* Dwight thinks that the interest earned by financial assets by the LLC will probably be distributed back to members based on proportion of equity. That's his lay understanding but will check with a professional and pass on to email list.
* Dwight has made progress on the accounting, but is still in process. Expects to have a statement for everyone by the end of next week.

Land/Site
* Haven't heard from Elisa in a while.
* Dave says the Concord report is in electronic format but Cat needs to distribute it.
* Cat needs help with drafting letters to realtor.
* Roxanne can get fax numbers easily for realtors**
* Dave typed up a list with many questions for Chris but he never got a response from Chris. He's at a bit of a quandary about that happens next after we find land we're interested in. Dwight suggested Dave include his questions for Chris in the communication with Kelly.
* Roxanne has done research along with Dave for land. There's a site in Concord that is of interest. Joyce asked if there were criteria for our land search - did Chris give it to us? Did we give it to him? Dave has done a lot of work looking through MLS. Dwight asks if there are sites that have been identified in the MLS but haven't been looked at... does Dave need help with this? **Dave will send email to the list with sites that need to be driven by and assessed.
* Roxanne asked Dave to put a list of the criteria on the email list so that we know what we're looking for when we drive-by a site**

Professionals
* We Signed the LLC document to be sent to the commonwealth.

BREAK

Associate Membership Explanation
Rosa did a very good explanation of our levels of membership for people that are here today and are interested in getting more involved. Catya expanded.

7- Equity membership document
This is something for folks to sign when becoming equity members. There will be a phrasing change on this document about joining the LLC.
Concensus reached.
**Catya will draft a similar document for associate members

8- Retreat Logistics
* We're having a retreat at Cat and Dave's house in Maine. It takes 2-2.5 hours to get there, depending on point of origin. There maybe sleeping space concerns. Roxanne is probably going to come. We will go up Friday, return on Sunday.
* Will talk about Operating Agreement, do community building stuff, may do some recreation on water.
* Sat morning - Community building (idea: butcher paper activity of things we liked from tours) **Steph will start a conversation about this on email.
* Sat afternoon - meeting time
* Food - Cat will buy meal food, we will bring snack food individually.
* How late to stay on Sunday? We'll leave around 2-3pm.
* **Cat will send out directions to the email list
* San asks when we should discuss the affordable document sent to us by John Abrams. We will discuss this in the second meeting in June.

**Sherrard, Joyce and Julie would like to be on the mosaic-commons@yahoogroups list.

Contact us! * Email info or webmaster

Last modified: October 3, 2001