Present: Stephanie Doss, Dwight Ernest, Christie White, Dan Dick, Richard Hoenich, Sheila Globus, Carol Sakala, Jean Hopkins, Roxanne Theimer, David Heimann, Kim Shute, San Tunstall, Pascal von Fintel, Kai von Fintel, Emma Tunstall, Rosa Carson, Catya Belfer-Shevett, Dave Belfer-Shevett, Zach Belfer-Shevett, Naomi
Location: Parmenter Health Center
Minutes: Stephanie
Action Items: Dave
Facilitator: Rosa

Decisions
Approved the wording for unit selection process:

"We will attempt to solve the problem of unit selection by finding an amicable and optimal allocation of units.

This will probably be done by an ad hoc committee, which will ask each member household for their first choice of a unit (and if possible, second and/or third choices) together with a statement of what factors are important for their households. If not every household can get their first choice unit, the committee in consultation with the individual households involved will attempt to find the next best allocation.

If there is any impasse, the deciding factor will be seniority. Highest priority will be given to those that have been members for the longest time. To break ties between members that join on the same day, the length of involvement as associates will be used. To further break ties between members that became associates on the same day, the length of involvement as friends will be used. The secretary is in charge of maintaining a database of members and associates to keep track of seniority.

To participate in the unit selection process, a household has to have contributed the minimum 5% towards the unit cost and have mortgage pre-qualification for the amount they will need to finance."

Cat proposes that we continue the contract with Chris and if he can't do a full months worth of work, we will ask him to modify the contract to fewer days. Approved

Action Items:

Discussion:

1. Opening Activity
Catya picked the question: "If you had to describe your personality in terms of a farm animal, which one would you choose?"

2. Review Colored Cards and Ground Rules
Rosa reviewed the consensus and discussion cards

3. Announcements and Approve Agenda
No announcements.
Agenda Approved

4. Approve Minutes
Approved without revision

5. Discuss feelings about rejected proposal
We did a go-around and talked about our feelings about the proposal not being accepted. Most comments indicated disappointment but a general positive feeling that we have learned from the process and will find another piece of land that works for us.

6. Team Reports
Land/Site

• What a week!
  
• We heard the news back from Dottie that she has not accepted our proposal. Chris was a little surprised, but his next thought was "what's our next step." He wondered if this is recoverable - the best guess is that a developer came in and proposed a less dense development and offered more money. Chris did send mail back to her and asked if he could have a follow-up meeting. He said we'd like to know who the developer is so we can know who we are working up against in the area.
  
• Cat said she'd like to let New View know about the decision in some formal way.
  
• Dave's next step was to send a letter to Chris asking what our next steps are: 1) triangular piece of land in Acton? 2) Framingham property?
• Chris responded right away to Dave's mail and said he would work on these issues right away.
  
• Dave contacted the listing agent for the 32 acre Framingham property but has not yet heard back from us. Dave will follow-up with her again tomorrow. It is evidently already zoned for dense property development.
  
• Question about this Framingham property - is it sub-dividable? Can we re-sell a part of the property since we won't be able to use all of it?
  
• Christie will join the land-site email list.
  
• Rosa asked Dave to send mail to the general mosaic list with updates about this stuff more often. Dave agreed.
  
• Cat pointed out that the point of the conference call is to make sure that someone from the group has contact with him once a week. Talked a bit about the purpose of the conference call.
  
• There is another 12acre property in Framingham that is zoned for 18 units that we are looking into. Roxanne says it is currently going through sewer permitting.
  
• Pointed out that the Mead Property is unlikely to happen, but it is not outside of the realm of possibility.
  
• Do we have any more proposed dates for Chris to come out? He was supposed to come out last week but got sick with the flu. Cat will ask about this.

Marketing

• Cat asked if folks were putting up flyers - some yes, some no.
  
• We have an ad in Spirit of Change.
  
• We will have an ad in Natural Child Project.
  
• We will get a free ad in Mothering Magazine in exchange for us handing out complementary copies of the magazine at our intro meetings.
  
• Sheila suggested a new magazine called Body, Mind, and Spirit.
  
• We have a subscription to the Acton Paper now.
  
• Our ad is in the Cohousing Magazine
  
• We will have an ad in the next SVS Journal.
  
• Judy emailed 50+ Newsletter but got no response.
  
• Sheila also suggests bringing some brochures to intro meetings for people to put them up. Catya usually does this, but didn't today because they are being printed.
  
• There was an article in the Globe today featuring Cornerstone Cohousing. Rosa will write a follow-up letter to the editor.

Professionals

• Roxanne will talk to Jerry about the facilitation workshop tomorrow. This was on hold, but we now want to go forward.

Secretary
No update

Website
No report

Affordability

• Kim met with the lawyer this week. She felt like either he was not "getting it" or she wasn't clear. So today, Kim talked to a friend who does Corporate Consultation - her rate is $50/hr. Kim asked her four major questions and she will make a few phone calls about it. She said she didn't understand why we needed to create a non-profit chapter from the national chapter for affordability - she thinks we could create our own non-profit and avoid the liabilities. Cat said that Kelly says it takes a long time and is very difficult. The lawyer thinks it might not be that hard to set up a non-profit.
  
• We have approved $150 for Kim to work with this lawyer.
  
• We seem to be in favor of going forward with becoming a 501c3 if it is simple.

Coordinating

• Went through action items
  
• Dwight can't get the video projector from his company. Ken will try to look into it.
  
• San updated the FAQ - thinks there needs to be two more questions: 1) What is our connection to SVS? 2) How child friendly are we and what is the level of child participation in the group?

Finance

• Cat proposes that we continue the contract with Chris for December. There were a few questions about this - what would we be hiring him to do? Answer - land search. Dave states he doesn't anticipate it taking another 12 weeks to get to the point of proposal. Dwight asks what Chris has done this month… Dave estimates that he's done about a day and a half worth of work in Nov so far. Presumably he will be working on the task list we've given him - there is time left in the month for him to complete the contract. It might be worth asking Chris if he feels he could do a full months worth of work in December with the holidays - and if he can't, can we change the contract to less than 5 days?
  Naomi asked if there is a known eb and flow of available land by month - Dave's response is that since we're using non-traditional means to finding land, we don't know if there will be a slow-down, but we don't anticipate there being one.
  
• Cat proposes that we continue the contract with Chris and if he can't do a full months worth of work, we will ask him to modify the contract to fewer days. Approved
  
• Dwight made a financial report.
  
• We will have expenses of roughly $6500, with about $700 in the bank, and about $4700 in income. So we need to come up with $900 for next month.
  
• Dwight suggests we will need to have a cash call tonight for $900. Kai proposes rounding that to $1000. This cash call will be done over email - people must respond by Wednesday at 5:00pm.
  
• We don't have an official invoice from Chris for November.

7. Babysitting Update
Jean reports: most in email, refers to Cohousing manual, page 26, recommends what we are doing (getting someone from outside), group has already decided that childcare costs are covered in their entirety by the group. Rate of $7/hr plus $1 per child was established for teenagers, but we've been paying $15/hr for Guin. This week we are covering Guin. Roxanne's friend is covering next week at the teenager rate, and if she's happy with us and vice-versa that could become a regular commitment. Jean is gathering contact info for all of these people. Xi brings up the subject of Keith's performance, etc. Cat recommends that we have a totally unconnected adult. Steph advocates more responsibility for Keith, and points out that kids respond to that. Rick points out that Keith should be aware he's welcome in the meeting and Xi says he's been invited. San says Keith has performed a helpful auxiliary role in bringing kids in need back to the meeting, and that perhaps he ought to be paid for that. Judy asks, "What does Keith want?" Xi answers, "He wants to baby-sit," and adds that he would be bored in the meeting. Naomi suggests that we give him and other kids an opportunity to bring issues to the meeting, in a regular way. This gains apparent consensus. Xi will ask Keith what he needs in a helping role.

8. Unit Selection Language
Kai distributed new proposed unit selection language and explained it. With minor changes, this new language was agreed to.

9. Revised Associate/Member Checklist
The proposed language that was passed out via an email of the URL will be formally proposed for consensus at next meeting.

10. Future Dates and Agenda Items
Agenda:
Discuss recording of consensus decisions - make note of the distribution of colored cards or not? What does it mean?

Future Dates:
12/2 General Meeting
12/8 Social - ice skating
12/15 Facilitation workshop?
12/16 Intro (Cat, Kai, Jean) and General Meeting
1/6 General Meeting
1/12 - 2nd Anniversary Celebration - Yankee Swap, Festive Potluck, singing/music/drumming
1/20 Intro (Kai, Jean) and General Meeting

11. Process Meeting

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Last modified: July 21, 2002