Present: John Barrett, Catya Belfer-Shevett, Dave Belfer-Shevett, Zach Belfer-Shevett, Rosa Carson, Judy Dempewolff, Stephanie Doss, Kai von Fintel, Pascal von Fintel, David Heimann, Lisa Lally, Rick Osborne, Gabe osborne, Kim Shute, Roxanne Theimer, San Tunstall, Emma Tunstall, Christie White, Keith Pangman, Virginia Fry, Michael Hanau, Linda Wheeler, Janice Carduner
Location: Parmenter
Notes: Stephanie
Facilitator: Rosa
Timekeeper/Process Observer: John

Decisions
We'll leave the rainbow symbol off of the flyers for now. Cat will work on bringing out the inclusivity statement and linking it to the Mosaic.

Action Items:

Discussion:

Agenda
1. Opening Activity
Name, Committee, and New Years Resolutions

2. Review of Colored Cards and Ground Rules
Rosa did so.

3. Announcements and Approval of Agenda
Agenda Approved with one item removed

4. Review and Approve Minutes from Previous Meetings
Action Items weren't posted in the minutes from the last meeting.
No changes to the previous meeting's minutes - approved.

5. Revision of Proposal for Mentor System
David H rewrote the proposal for consideration.
Steph asks about the last sentences about households who have been involved for more than 6 months requesting mentors - people seemed to agree that this isn't necessary.
Linda asked about who would be a mentor - is it mandatory for a household to be available to be a mentor or is it voluntary? Answer - voluntary, but this needs to be added.
Cat suggests cutting out "prospective member" and replacing with "household" or "new household" in most places.
Rosa asks how long someone should be involved before they can become a mentor - is 6 months long enough? People seem to agree that this is a fine timeline.
Clarification - this does not change membership requirements at all.
Changed "shall maintain" to "offers" in the first paragraph.
Made several more edits.
Approved by consensus.
This will get implemented when a new person comes to a general meeting and their name/number is given to a potential member. This needs to be discussed further in the email discussion list.
Action Item: Rick will bring this up on email.

6. Review of Trifold
Each new version was passed around for review.
San likes #2 flyer. Others agree.
Great job Cat!!

7. Rainbow on our flier
Do we want to put a rainbow on our flier/website as a marketing tool?
Rosa does not have strong feelings about it - she sees both sides of the argument and agrees with points on both sides of the issue.
Kim was initially very supportive of putting the rainbow on the flyer but then reconsidered after reading some of the positions against putting the rainbow on the flyer.
Cat responds that if we're putting up flyers at queer events, we don't need to put the rainbow on them because simply advertising directly to that group indicates we are queer friendly.
Janice asks why we want to market to them directly. The answer is that Cat noticed the rainbow flyer on a church sign (UU Church) and thought it would be a good marketing tool.
Kai feels convinced by some of the arguments made on the list that we shouldn't use it (although he was initially in approval of using it).
San feels the same - appreciated Julie's comments on the email list.
David H very much identifies the rainbow symbol as a symbol for gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered people and feels that if we were to use it, we might be indicating that we are only open to that group of people. He suggests that rather than using the flag, we could use words that talk about our inclusion ideas.
Christie does not agree that using the rainbow flag on the flyer would indicate that we are a queer-only group. She feels it would indicate that we are welcoming. She also liked Julie's suggestions and thinks we should use them in our thoughts for other marketing ideas.
Kim points out that the rainbow flag catches her eye when she's out in the community and likes the symbol, but also sees the other perspective and doesn't think we should use it on the flyer.
Rick agrees that we should not use it - that cohousing is an inclusive community by nature. Don't need to trip over ourselves to point out that we're a community that is friendly to gay/lesbian/bisexual and diverse populations.
Dave thinks that if we're going to single out one group, we need to think about how we target other groups that are typically left out of marketing targets.
Cat points out that we target specific groups all the time. She points out that one of the newspapers we market to is Bay Windows (a queer newspaper), senior newspapers, poly groups, etc.. Until now none of our marketing flyers have used any symbols. She thinks it would be a useful experiment to see how it impacts our turnout. She would suggest that we experiment with putting it on posters instead of the flyers.
Steph doesn't feel strongly one way or the other. But thinks it might make sense to try as an experiment, as Cat suggested.
Rosa also doesn't feel strongly one way or the other, but agrees that it would be a good idea to try it as an experiment.
Judy wonders what problem we are solving since we seem to already attract a fair number of queer people. She worries about Julie's caution that we could get labeled as a glbt group.
John remembers a comment made by a person at Pioneer Valley reminding us to focus on the values of our community so thinks this kind of a conversation is very valuable and is glad to be having it. John cautions us to be cognizant of the kind of group that we get labeled as. He wants us to think about what problem we are solving by our marketing tools and what message are we sending.
Roxanne was initially very supportive of the flag, but now feels it would be more appropriate to prominently use our vision statement. She points out that one of our areas of diversity that we could use some help in is in racial diversity.
Lisa hears a lot of fear in some of our comments. When she sees the rainbow flag she no longer feels isolated - it is an incredible feeling. She thinks it would be nice to keep it on the website for a while.
Christie raises the question - What are we afraid of if we did attract lots of queer people?
Perhaps we should have the vision statement on our marketing tools that get the widest circulation (currently the tear off posters)
Kim points out that perhaps this needs to be discussed in a process workshop - How do we define community? What do we want, what do we mean by wanting diversity?
Virginia suggests that we take the inclusivity statement from our vision statement and link it to the word Mosaic and point out the definition of Mosaic. If we make it more prominent, it would stand out and define us more.
Summary: We'll leave the rainbow symbol off of the flyers for now. Cat will work on bringing out the inclusivity statement and linking it to the Mosaic. (Virginia will help Cat with this).

8. Land/Site Team Report and Action Items
Affordability
No updates

Coordinating
We need to think about more values statements - do we want to make more decisions about parenting, guns? Perhaps we need to do a visioning weekend?
We had talked about having a discussion about netiquette and interpersonal skills online, but we haven't been able to fit it in. Rosa thinks we should drop it until it comes up again. We can leave it on the list of potential discussions.
Sounds like we need to start thinking about when to have another one.

Finances
No report

Land/Site
Had a good meeting with Chris on the 20th. Some of the minutes were posted by Dave, but Christie's didn't get put up. Christie will put the notes up on the mosaic-members list.
Chris brought up a property in Sherborne. Chris has made contact with a developer from Sherborne that is very pro-cohousing so he could be a great resource. Russell also seems to have a lot of good thoughts for affordable housing.
Kim sent him email about a property in Concord - Dave needs to poke him about it.
Russell may come to the Jan 20th intro meeting.
Stu Meyer, from Nexum, is another contact that Chris is working with.
John and going to work with Chris about cold calls.
Chris is looking into some properties in N. Maynard.

Marketing
No Report

Professionals
No Report

Secretary
Steph asked people to consider taking over the role of Secretary as she will not be able to do it after the twins are born. There is also the possibility that she will have to take a leave sooner than expected if put on bedrest.
Christie offered to take over the Secretary job.

Website
No report

9. Process Check-in Process Observer

10. Pet Policy
Tabled for a future meeting

11. Ongoing Participation Requirements
Tabled for a future meeting. We should discuss this on email.

12. Decisions while Dave, Cat and Rosa are absent from the next two meetings
They will be available by phone during the next meeting. Dave and Cat are in favor of continuing Chris' contract. They will not be accessible Feb. 2nd-10th while on vacation in the BVIs.
Cat recognizes that there is always the possibility that we could find land while they are out of touch. We could possibly get in touch with them, actually, via the chartering company - Dave will send out the phone number.
Kai reminds us that we do have policies and processes in place to deal with these situations. The primary need is to have a contact number to reach them.

13. Future Dates, Upcoming Agenda Items
1/13/02 12:00-4:00 Facilitation Workshop
1/13/02 4:30 2nd Anniversary Party
1/20/02 1:00-3:00 Intro Meeting (Kai, Steph and Dwight, Jean?)
1/20/02 3:30-6:30 General Meeting
2/3/02 3:30-6:30 General Meeting
2/17/02 1:00-3:00 Intro Meeting
2/17/02 3:30-6:30 General Meeting

Late Jan/Early Feb Meeting with Chris ScottHanson??

14. Process Observations
People like the new room location
Kudos to everyone for our handling of some of our difficult process so well today.

Contact us! * Email info or webmaster

Last modified: January 13, 2002