Mosaic Commons Minutes: 10/21/01

Mosaic Commons General Meeting
October 21, 2001 3:30-6:30

Present: Stephanie Doss, John Barrett, Judy Dempewolff, Naomi Docan-West, Jim West, Rosa Carson, Catya Belfer-Shevett, San Tunstall, Emma Tunstall, Kai von Fintel, Pascal von Fintel, Dave Belfer-Shevett, Lisa Lally, Bob Goodearl, Ken Porter, Christie White, Roxanne Theimer, Donna Farina, Jean Hopkins, Kim Shute, Rick Osborn, David Heimann
Facilitator: Rosa
Notes: Steph
Action Items: Dave

Decisions
Ken and Christie became equity members working toward a small three bedroom. Yay!
Approved the decision to move forward with the land proposal.

Action Items

#	Committee	Open Date	Update	Person	Description
1	Affordability	10/21/01		Kim	Write mail to cat with question about the 501(3)c stuff to pass to Chris and folks.
2	Affordability	07/15/01	09/16/01	Kim	Will talk to asssistive financing groups 8/19 ongoing 9/16 - still ongoing. "I may not be in a place where I can pursue this without more detail... I can make initial inquiries..." Maybe try and get more details about what funds are available? 10/21 - Found several foundations. Talked to marketing about a 'nonprofit' section. 501(3) status? Thinks the current foundation list will be no problem to get grants from - problem in that we're an LLC and and not a nonprofit. Dwight says we have to stay an LLC.
3	Affordability	06/03/01	08/19/01	Lisa	Research affordability facilitation groups 6/17/01 - most organizations don't seem to want to allocate funds until you're ready to break ground 8/19 Ongoing 9/16 Ongoing 10/21 In a crunch schoolwise, slowing down til end of november.
4	Affordability	06/03/01	10/21/01	Lisa / Rick	Talk to Kathy about philanthropic funding 10/21 Tough scheduling time.
5	All	09/16/01		All	All will reread the information about the Process Workshops that was sent to the mosaic-commons email list by San.
	Coordinating	10/21/01		Dwight	Schedule borrowing video projector for each meeting.
7	Coordinating	06/17/01	08/05/01	Kai	Work on the wording on Unit Selection 08/05/2001 - Reviewed at meeting - has this been approved? 9/16 - Steph will confirm 10/21 - Reassigned to Kai - Yes, the wording has not been approved - Kai will put together the details and present at the next meeting. Go back to August 5th for details.
8	Coordinating	09/16/01		Rosa	Rosa will bring up the Process Workshop issue for discussion in email.
9	Coordinating	10/07/01		Rosa	Rosa will be asked to revise the wording around use of color cards for the Consensus Statement. Contact Cat for clarification.
10	Coordinating	08/05/01	10/07/01	Rosa/Catya	Rosa will rework the consensus statement 8/19 - Meeting points out that the first draft needs to be reworked into 2 seperate paragraphs. An introduction to the consensus process and why we use it, and a practical 'this is how we implement it at MC' 10.7 - revisions suggested
11	Coordinating	07/15/01	08/05/01	San	Redo the FAQ's. 8/5/01 - Cat started it, San will look at it again.
12	Coordinating	07/15/01		San	Start discussion on the mailing list about reactivation of membership.
13	Coordinating	10/21/01		Steph	Contact san about the folders and envelopes for documents.
14	Coordinating	10/07/01		Steph	Steph will gather some background information to support the pet policy. 10/21 - Has started collecting stuff. Question about what to do with the information - answer, this is background information for when we do bring it up as a discussion topic.
15	Finance	07/15/01	10/07/01	Dwight	Research Loans to the LLC.
16	Finance	10/07/01		Dwight	Dwight will send out statements before the next meeting.
17	Finance	09/16/01		Dwight	Dwight will provide the Marketing Committee with a to-date expenditure summary. (Catya wants to see how much we*ve already spent on Marketing which would be helpful to know how much the total cost will be for the entire project and asked Dwight to provide her with such information from the accounting files.) 10/21 Promises to update
18	Finance	06/17/01	08/19/01	Kai	Research information on mortgage pre-approval scheduling 8/19 Research is ongoing 9/16 ongoing
19	LandSite	06/03/01	08/19/01	Dave	Will maek initial contact with Kevin Hurley to see whether he will work us and how 8/19 Will restart
20	LandSite	06/17/01		Roxanne	Contact Jason re: Energy Star 10/21 reassigned to roxanne
21	Marketing	10/07/01		All	ALL should send information to Cat by Oct 15th about the various email lists you are on so she can send the announcements to them.
	Marketing	10/21/01		Catya	Get Email version of flyer to Naomi
	Marketing	10/21/01		Catya	Get word document to Ken for color printing
24	Membership	06/03/01	09/16/01	Kai	Write up examples of the items we need to have included in the Operating Agreement for our group to review at the next meeting. 6/17/01 - still in the works, need to slate a time to do this, it'll take half a meeting to work out the details 08/05/01 - First drafts presented and discussed - still going on.
25	Membership	08/19/01		Rosa	Make a note in the 'rules' about becoming an associate and and equity member on the same day. - also, put together some sort of 'sponsor' mechanism?
26	Membership	06/17/01	09/16/01	San	Go through the discussion list subscriptions and do pruning where necessary.
27	Membership	08/05/01	09/16/01	San / Catya	Put together a document describing ow to get on the YahooGroups stuff
28	Membership	08/05/01	09/16/01	Steph	Put together a 'members handbook' for new people 10/21 Talk to christie and judy about helping out.
	Professionals	09/16/01	10/07/01	Roxanne	Phone Jerry for information on facilitation 10/21 Left jerry a voicemail message, has been contacted
30	Secretary	08/05/01	10/07/01	Steph	Steph will set up a database to keep track of when members/associates join 9/16 steph and cat will talk about putting them on the website10/7 in process
31	Secretary	10/07/01		Steph	Steph should keep on-hand the clarification of what the requirements are to become an Associate Member.
32	Secretary	08/05/01	09/16/01	Steph	Steph will work on protocol for distributing documents. 9/16 still working on it.
33	Secretary	06/03/01	09/16/01	Steph	Check on cohousing-L for any pointers on maintaining momentum between meetings 6/17/01 - Cat hasn't drafted it - mostly tryign to get the question organized. Steph will take over
34	Secretary	06/03/01	10/07/01	Steph	Get the old documents from Lisa 6/17/01 - Steph wrote email today, waiting to hear back. 08/05/2001 - Steph will call 9/16 cat will ask Andey
35	Website	10/21/01		Dwight	Write a paragrph on 'why we're an LLC' and send it to cat to post on the website.

Agenda
1. Introductions and Opening Activity
What about Winter are you most looking forward to?

2. Review of Colored Cards and Ground Rules
Rosa reviewed the discussion and consensus colored cards as we had many people stay from the intro meeting.

3. Approve Agenda and New Business
Christie and Ken requested to become equity members. Approved by consensus.

4. Approve Minutes
Oct. 7 - Need to ad the language for the participation of children in consensus. Approved with the change.
Sept. 16 - Approved with no changes

5. Team Reports and Action Items
Affordabiity:

Kim has been working on affordability a lot this past week because it may become an issue soon. One of the ideas they're batting around is to set up a non-profit foundation within MC - she sees a lot of foundations that we could apply to for funding but don't qualify for because we're an LLC and not a non-profit. Cat suggests that this team use the time of the lawyer that we paid for from the Cohousing Conference.
Dwight points out that we have to stay a for-profit LLC to make this work, but he sees no problem about trying to establish a sub-foundation that would qualify for these grants. Catya will confer with Kelly and Chris about this.
Jean brought back some information about affordability from the League of Women Voters workshop.
Lisa emailed Kathy Glass - re: philanthropic information, but hasn't heard back. She's unable to work on this further until the end of November.
Rick wants to throw some ideas out there: he thinks that as a group we should think about how those grants would be distributed if we were to acquire these grants. What form of help do we want it to be? Consider raising enough capital to acquire one unit and use that to somehow use toward affordability.

Coordinating:

We were talking earlier about how to better use paper and documents. Talked about maybe trying to get or borrow a projector that attaches to a computer so that we can avoid using so much paper. Dwight thinks he can borrow one - Ken might be able to help if Dwight can't.
San also suggested using a folder system that was used in the beginning of the meeting. Steph will talk to San about it.
Steph clarified that we have not yet finalized the wording for the Unit Selection Process

Finance

Dwight presented a treasurer's report. Catya asked if Homeport has met their 5% - Dwight doesn't know yet.
We have a shortfall next month if we hire Chris again. Therefore we may need to do a cash call for next month.

Land/Site

Most action items remain.
Chris has already contacted assessors in the area, so we don't need to do this ourselves.
Cat asks if anyone else would be interested in picking up some of the old action items - Roxanne will do so.

Marketing/Membership

Cat brought flyers today - needs all of us to take some and put them up at various places. Ken offered to help printing things in color.
Naomi asked about an email version to send out to lists - Cat will get that to Naomi.
Cat reminds people to get their email list information to her so she can send out information to them about the group before an intro meeting. She will mail them on 11/11 so she needs the information before then.
John found out that an ad in AARP's "My Generation" magazine is prohibitively high. We need to figure out how to reach out to this age group without going bankrupt.
Steph asked for some help with the "members handbook" - Judy and Christie offered.

Professionals

Roxanne did leave a message for Jerry but has not heard back yet.

Secretary

Steph did create a database of when people joined as associates and equity members. Michael…Scott.. how to document?

Website

Dwight will write a paragraph for the FAQ about why we are an LLC.

------------------BREAK------------------
Prospective members (non-associates and non-equity members) left the meeting so we could talk about these confidential issues. Members please review the content here on our confidential email list.

6. Land

1) Overview
2) Go around (personal feelings)
3) Clarifications
4) Proposal - yes/no? Most green cards, one orange, one yellow
5) How much?
6) CSH Contract
7) Cash Call

7. Dates, Future Agenda Items
Nov. 4th - 3:30-6:30 General Meeting
Nov 18th - 1:00-3:00 Intro meeting - Dwight and Steph will do intro meeting
Nov 18th - 3:30-6:30 General Meeting
November Social: Contra Dancing in Concord at the Scout House. Date TBA
Nov 10-13th Chris will be in town. We will see if he is available to meet with us after the 13th.

8. Closing
Great social last night!

Last modified: October 28, 2001