Minutes of Mosaic Commons General Meeting
June 17, 2001, 3:30-6:30pm

Decisions:

• Approved spending $50 to place an ad in the MTA newspaper.
• Approved the wording for the fax to realtors.
• We came to consensus and agreed to hire Chris ScottHanson to do the land search beginning August 1st.
  

Action Items:

Discussion:

1. Approve Agenda
The order was changed a bit, and approved.

2. Approve Minutes
Tabled until the next meeting as they weren't posted to the website. Cat will post to the website and we'll approve next week.

3. Document Review
Kelly gave us some feedback for our documents:
1- that we change some language that new Associates "read and support" all of our previous decisions. Rosa suggested "read and accept". The main thing we are trying to convey is that new folks shouldn't attempt to have us revisit and re-decide previous issues. We agree it makes sense to add something.
2- re: Unit selection priority. She read it differently than we intended which means we need clearer language. (See Cat's email for precise wording). Kai will rework the wording for the unit selection priority.
**Decided to revisit both suggestions at the next meeting.

4. Fliers
Cat passed around her new flier designs. She suggested that we do another mailing with the new fliers - we can do it at the next meeting if we're going to be at Parmenter. Doesn't make sense to do it when we're visiting Pathways/Pioneer Valley. Ken suggested dropping the answer to the catch line "Do you know your neighbors" and just answering it in the text. Other suggestions: move picture up, make sure there is space to write in one of the corners so that people can put their contact information on it. Cat will redraft with the new suggestions.

5. Committee Reports and Action Items
Dave took notes - most of these were updated via the action items.

Treasury:

• Dwight reported: Have spent $7K on consulting, $500 on babysitting. He is almost done entering all the treasury data into Peachtree. We all asked that he let us know as soon as possible how much each member owes so that we can catch up.
• Affordability: Roxanne says that she's found that most all state agencies don't want to provide subsidies until we are ready to break ground. We will discuss further when we go over the Affordability policy from Island Cohousing.
• Talked about Concord Affordability levels, Kai read a quote from ___. Cat suggested that we make contact with these agencies anyway and find out what their criteria is for applying when we get to that point. Rox talked about Executive Order 418 - Concord has applied for it but Acton hasn't. It sets aside X million dollars by the state to help with affordable housing. How do we tap into the fund? The DOH and Community Development website talks about we access it. Also, need to keep in mind that sometimes these funds come in the form of block grants to the towns.

Land/Site

• Dave exchanged mail with Bill in Lincoln. He is a "buyer's agent" (although this was debated as to how he can call himself a buyer's agent). He works in the realty industry but is NOT a realtor. He's very liberal minded and interested in doing a fair deal. He's willing to talk to us about this piece of land in Lincoln - he represents the guy who is selling the property. Dave thinks we should pursue working with him whether we end up pursing this property in Lincoln or not.
  
• Roxanne has a new piece of land for us to consider in N.Acton near Nagog Plaza. 5.5 acres. Zoned for office park, but anything that is less intrusive is usually a positive. What's nearby? Office buildings and a horse farm. Currently it has a permit for a self storage facility. It is outside of our search area but we can still look at it - Rox will drive by it.
  
• Dave and Rox need to get together to consolidate their contact lists.
  
• Starmet has officially been added as a SuperFund site as of last week.
  
• Cat - add Christie to the Land/Site Committee.

Misc

• Steph - combine action items from the retreat to the regular action items.
• We liked the 'taskmaster' idea that was implemented last week - will keep doing it. Christie is the taskmaster this week.

6. Chris ScottHanson
Summarized the meeting with Chris. We have a video of it. Ken has volunteered to take the tape and compress it so that it can put it in digital format. Dwight gave Ken the Hi-8 tape.
High points of the meeting, as summarized by Kai.
Those present: Dave, Cat, Kai, Chris
-Talked about contract.
-Discussed previous contract work and communication issues with Chris and Kelly. Chris came to the last meeting with a different perception -he came to the meeting believing that he was supposed to report in detail on the Framingham site and then poke around in Concord. From his point of view, he did what the contract called for. In the discussion on Monday we decided that when he has a contract with us in the future we would have a meeting as soon as possible to review what he would do for this contract AND have a follow up meeting at the end. In addition, we talked about having a person that would a liaison to him that would have a weekly phone call with him to touch base. Dwight was volunteered but he would prefers not to do it - he is overloaded. The idea is for it to be someone other than Cat so that there is a different/additional voice from the group. This conversation can also be a conference call, say, every Sunday night.
-Dave is volunteering to be the liaison now (Cat came back later and volunteered to continue being the primary liaison as well). The person who is the liaison needs to have a good grasp of where the group is at re: consensus. Does not require a large amount of real estate knowledge.
-Chris would be reporting on his findings from the previous week and asking for direction. The liaison would be the go-between.
-Dwight will arrange for the conference call infrastructure.
-Chris said he felt it was time to follow up on the Framingham site and that his recollection is that they are probably close to finding a developer for the site and that we should find out if there is any chance for us to partner with this developer to get a chunk of the land. This developer might want us to purchase a sizable amount of units - 35 possibly? But if we're buying a horse farm they might want a lower amount than we're thinking. San points out that if we buy 35 lots we don't necessarily have to build on all of them.
-then clarified the contract. Kai asked some very good and specific questions about the contract. There are two stages to it: (1) finding the land - Chris would do some of this onsite here, piggybacking on his work for JP, but a lot would be done on the phone as well. Talking to people in the know, developers, etc. Chris would be presenting it as Cohousing Resources purchasing the land, not as representing us. He would find out if it is a site we're interested in and then ask us if we want him to negotiate for the land. Then (2) it would go into a purchase and sale agreement between Cohousing R and the seller with a bunch of contingency clauses for feasibility studies which he thinks he could get 90days for it. And a clause that says when the closing happens he will assign the rights to the 3rd party LLC that we'll form with him and a developer.
He would put together a feasibility team which includes engineers, land architects, etc.
Payment: gets usual $1000per day + expenses and we'd budget 5 days a month. This is the same rate we've been paying him. Once he finds land and we decide to purchase it there is a Service and Risk fee (this is to make it clear to local realtors that he is NOT a realtor), that is $20,000 (which would be his commission if he was a realtor). There are expenses against this fee as well (liability insurance, his legal fees). This is divided up into $5k at purchase and sale and then $15K at closing (this can be included in the construction loan).
-For us, we would have to pay for feasibility - which he estimated at $20-30K, and then the cost of the down payment. This is when some people will jump in because we've got land.
-At the end of the 90 days we'll pay the down payment ($50-100K).
-The feasibility fees are the most risky.
-Another thing that came up is that we each need to do an exercise - If you were 100% comfortable, how much money could you come up with? What assets can you liquidate? What money can you borrow from family? What money can you come up with if you were 100% comfortable??? He said most 5 member groups could come up with $300-$400,000.
-One thing to think about between hiring Chris and doing it on our own - if we don't pay him we'll be paying a large commission to a realtor.

There was a discussion with him about what would happen if we actually decide to hire him:
-Two choices on timing: (Chris and Kelly will be occupied with the cohousing conference for 2 weeks, but there is a 3 week period between now and then that he could use. He is coming out July 12, doing a workshop with JP on the 13th for their common house design. He could be doing work with us (onsite) Thursday and part of Friday. The other option is for them to start after the conference, Aug. 1st.

-Point: if the land isn't feasible for us to build on, we still own the land. We may get the land for below market and can sell it for a profit and get the $ back.
-Cat says that the reason it is put in the name of Cohousing Resources is that he finds that most sellers are unwilling to sell directly to the group so hiring CR would be a large benefit in moving this along.

--Our understanding is that Chris still has some follow up work to do with Framingham. That he needs to write the letter and that this is included in the previous contract. (Cat will relay this to Chris). We want this to happen before August.

Cat asked if they are the only equity members that can come up with extra money.
-Discussed whether we need to do a cash call now, if we have enough money in the bank now, or if we will need one in August. Found out that we will most likely NOT need to do a cash call to hire Chris for three months (up through October).

What is OUR role once we hire him?
-Continue to find properties and send them on to Chris (Roxanne and Dave)
-Continue to learn about Acton and Concord. Visit them, hang out, check out the town.
-Continue to drive-by the sites that are being considered.
-Do an intro meeting with him here when he's out here in August.

DECISION: We came to consensus and agreed to hire Chris ScottHanson to do the land search beginning August 1st.

We would like an addition to the contract - the wording that Cat wrote up in email explaining the contract. (Cat**)

We will have an email discussion about the time/day of the week these weekly conference calls should happen.

7. Dates
Picnic next Sunday - Cat will announce more details as she has them
July 8, 2001 - Soaring social at Sterling Airport (and ice cream!)

Future agenda items:
7/1 Subsidies document from Island Cohousing
7/15 Operation Agreement/Policy Manual (will take 1/2 a meeting)
Date TBA: Mortgage Pre-approval

8. Review and Closing
We all agreed that we need to be better about using our discussion cards. It makes facilitating much easier and less stressful. Decided that the facilitator should review the cards with everyone at the beginning of the next meeting so that we can utilize them quicker.

Contact us! * Email info or webmaster

Last modified: October 3, 2001