Present: Catya, Dave, Zach, Rosa, Judy, Stephanie, Dwight, Kai, Sarah Florreich, Greg Hellyer, Jean, Rick, Gabe, Ken, Kim, Roxanne, Christie, Lisa Wolf, Keith, Virginia Fry, Delia Windwalker, Jim Cook & AdaGrace Windwalker Cook, Lynn Thomas & her daughter, Ben Blum
Location: Parmenter
Facilitator: Rosa
Notes: Stephanie
Action Items: Catya and Sarah
Process Observer/Time Keeper: Judy

Decisions

• Sarah is now the Action Item Manager
  
• We will re-contract with Cohousing Resources for March contingent upon receipt of the revised contract that has already been verbally agreed upon.
  
• We will purchase a two boxes of books from Cohousing Resources: (1) box of The Cohousing Handbook to be resold at intro and general meetings at $15 and (1) box of CoHousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves to be resold at a price yet to be determined.
  
• Approved the expenditure of $75 - $200 to pay for professional tax filing for Mosaic Commons LLC through Church Street Associates.

Action Items:

Discussion:

Agenda
1. Opening Activity
Do you have any siblings? If so, how many, what kind, where do you fit in?

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

3. Announcements and Approval of Agenda
Agenda Approved

4. Review and Approve Minutes from Previous Meetings
· From #4 need to correct the dates to reflect January instead of June
· Greg volunteered to do research on the Green Issues for the Hot Topics. This was not reflected in the previous minutes.

5. Clarifying Responsibilities
· Who is in charge of contract issues with Cohousing Resources?
· Cat's feeling is roughly that John should talk to Chris about the things that Chris deals with and that Cat will talk to Kelly about the things that Kelly deals with. Kelly is the one that deals with contracts so Cat will deal with Kelly around contracts and the other issues Kelly deals with.

6. Proposal regarding unit prices, bucket #2 money
· Kai and Dwight brought forth this issue for discussion - they had previously posted it to the list for review.
· One issue is not addressed which is depending on how the land purchase works and how the plan works, there is a point at which we will need to show a certain level of pre-sales (down payment + mortgage pre-approval). We may need to reach that level by any means necessary if we are faced with time limits. We may need to force people to accelerate their payments to reach their 5%. There is little language about that in the proposal right now.
· Dwight read the proposal.
The finance committee has been asked to come up with a proposal about what happens when after securing land, we need to raise the projected unit prices. The following issues in particular arise:

Scenario I:
Members who had previously made their minimum 5% contribution but who have not made any additional Bucket #2 or #3 investments, are now not at the threshold any more.

Proposal:
Such members will be given a reasonable amount of time to contribute the additional funds necessary to reach the 5% minimum again, with a minimum monthly contribution equal to what their original schedule was.

Scenario II:
Members who had previously made their minimum 5% contribution and have made additional Bucket #2 or #3 investments since then.

Proposal:
Such members will be given a choice: (i) they can opt to redesignate (part of) their Bucket #2 or #3 investments as minimum equity contributions; (ii) they can opt to contribute additional funds to raise their Bucket #1 contribution to the new 5% minimum, with a minimum monthly contribution equal to what their original schedule was. The second option may be advantageous because the Bucket #2 and #3 contributions will have accrued interest and will continue to do so, while equity contributions (past the early incentives) receive no return.

Scenario III:
Members who are still making monthly payments on a schedule to reach their minimum 5% contribution.

Proposal:
Such members will be given a choice: (i) they can opt to add extra payments at the end of their current schedule, continuing contributions until they reach the new 5% minimum, (ii) they can, in consultation with the finance committee, recompute their payment level so as to reach the new 5% minimum in the same timeframe as previously planned.

Scenario IV:
New members.

Proposal:
Depending on the financial situation of the group, we may decide to make an upfront lump sum payment of the 5% minimum downpayment the default policy for new members. This would still be subject to special arrangements in consultation with the finance committee. This might also be modulated by whatever other affordability measures we implement in the future.

In all four scenarios, we will continue to offer the possibility of alternative arrangements for families with temporary financial difficulties, to be implemented in consultation with the finance committee.

· Cat suggested a rephrasing regarding people who are having difficulty with finances - she suggested we may want to remove the temporary or change it.
· Cat thinks that the #4 proposal sounds pretty scary for some people - She thinks we may want to hold off on this and simply phrase it as "we may require". We need to be clear in the policy that we won't randomly decide to require 5% up front until the point of the construction loan.
· Kai responds that we may need to accelerate payments to reach 5% at some point when we know more about the construction loan requirements.
· It makes sense to be specific about the criteria for speeding up payments.
· Steph made a comment and asked a question about scenario 2: It seems to more fair to require people to either move money back from bucket 2 into bucket 1 OR make a lump sum. Sarah also clarified that you would not lose your interest that have already accrued from the money in bucket #2
· Kai thinks that the way it is proposed is best because there as an incentive to get people to put money into the project.
· The rate of return from money in bucket 2 is 15% APR currently. This goes down to 12.5% at zoning approval.
· Cat still feels like we should build a new payment schedule based on the new numbers.
· Kai responded by saying that the proposal says that we will not require higher monthly payments from people who are already on a schedule. If the group has a need to raise more money to reach pre-sales amounts, we may consider raising payments at that time.
· What happens with new members at the point at which we get a new budget? This needs to be addressed. The issue is whether to put current members onto a new schedule in the absence of a pre-sales requirement.
· Kai and Dwight will bring this back to the next meeting with some revisions for more discussion.

7. Action Item Czar
· I.E. Action Item Manager (as preferred by Sarah)
· One of the open issues of having Sarah taking over the action items during the meetings is how would she do it? She would take notes by hand and update it that night - up on the website for Monday.
· We would need to be able to export the information to put it in the minutes as well.
· It would be nice for people to be able to go in and update their tasks directly - Sarah is looking into appropriate software for this.
· Reminder system: How will people remain accountable if the action items are being dealt with outside of the meetings? Sarah will make sure to bring it up in the meetings.
· Sarah would like an address for Action Item Manager @ mosaiccommons.org (a forward account).
· Sarah will keep track of the action items during the meeting.
· She will take on reminding people of their items every week.
· She will find appropriate software.
· Christie asks - what medium will she remind people? Answer - in whatever medium people prefer.
· Cat: Would this software be installed on the mosaic site? Yes - Dwight and Cat need to talk about this.

8. Team Reports and Action Items
Land/Site
· Stow property is still open, but the Acton property is no longer available. It's unclear what happened with the Acton property, but one offer was put in by New View, the cohousing community that is adjacent to the Acton property.
· The Stow property has 3 different zonings: Residential, Commercial, Industrial. Chris is researching what this means for the # of units.
· Dwight will send John the details on how to set up the conference calls.
· Steph is willing to be on the conference calls to take notes if
· Cat wanted to be clear that she wants to avoid the situation that Dave experienced - the contact person being in regular contact and knowing what's going on is not enough - we need to know what is going on as a group.
· John has expressed that he communicates best in person, but we need him to communicate more regularly to the group in email.
· Kim wants a list of questions to ask realtors, land holders, etc. in order to evaluate a property - would like to get this from Chris (i.e. zoning, etc.). This is so we can jump on properties that we hear about and find out more about before we forward them to Chris.
· Dwight responds that we did develop such a list and should forward that to John and Kim. (Steph should do)
· Steph points out that we've agreed that when we have a proposal down on the property, we need to put our energy (and Chris') energy into that property and not searching for others.
· Judy questions whether we should actually just be focusing on one property at a time, when it feels like we may be losing time if we lose that property.
· We might want to ask Chris about whether this is still the approach we should continue with.
· Roxanne asks if we know what Chris will need before he is ready to put in the proposal? When will it be communicated to us whether the proposal will or won't go through? Answer: ASAP.
· Rick says he understood that we were ready to make a proposal on the Stow Property when we met with Chris two weeks ago - Steph agrees. John needs to clarify with Chris what happened.
· Steph points out that we need to decide whether to rehire Chris.
· Cat asks whether we decided to put Stow on the list? We did not decide to put Stow on the list because the zoning for this current piece of land seemed to be an exception and that we could do cohousing on it. (Kai clarified).
· Should we take the step of adding Stow to the list of towns so that Chris can pursue the zoning information and other properties in Stow? Yes
· Re: Chris' contract - Chris said he would have a proposal to the group about his contract if neither Stow or Acton properties worked out. Before we can rehire them we need to hear about the contract proposal, Kai says. Dwight says that he asked Chris about this (subcontracting with Nexum) and the answer was that this subcontracting would come out of Chris' pocket so it would not affect our contract with him.
· Virginia asked if the group is committed enough to Stow to not have Chris work with Nexum to look at other properties:
· Cat proposed that we re-contract with Cohousing Resources for March contingent upon receipt of the revised contract that has already been verbally agreed upon. - Agreed by Consensus

------BREAK------

9. Process Check-in
· Judy appreciated Dwight's process observation during the last discussion
· Lisa W commented on how she's observed that we do a very good job as a group being very respectful of each other.

10. Team Reports and Action Items
Affordability
Chris did send Kim his Affordability Proposal from Deerborne Commons - 10 ways to approach affordability.

Coordinating
The babysitter should have some cell phone #s of members so that she can call if there are last minute problems

Finance
· Mortgage pre-approval issue: Dwight is waiting for the merger/sale of Metrowest Bank by Bank North before he approaches them about this.
· Christie asked if we have agreed to do the development loans through Metrowest - answer is No, we haven't. We bank with them and they are one of the local banks that does have a history of providing construction loans - so we are building a relationship with them in case we want to approach them for this construction loan.
· Dwight will look into other financial institutions that provide construction loans.
· It turns out that we do need to file taxes this year and we will need an accountant to do this: Dwight plans to use Church Street Associates in Hopkinton. This will cost between $75-$200. Approved.
· Cat would like reimbursement for software - approved.
· Cat would like to propose that we purchase a box each of the Cohousing Resources Book as well as the green Cohousing Book. Approved. (Dwight reminded Cat that we need an invoice).

Marketing/Membership
· No report - good meeting today
· One family at the intro meeting might be interested in assisting with financing as well as potentially becoming associate members.
· We might want to think about offering babysitting for intro meetings - this could be a member coming early to watch the kids, or paying a babysitter.

Professionals
· Kim spoke with Kate McCabe about her possibly doing a consulting relationship with Matt Keifer. She said she'd love to meet with us - her hourly rate is $210, but she could package it as a flat rate. She would be happy to work with us.
· People should try to arrive by 11:30 for the Sunday workshop.

11. Hot Topics: Spiritual and Political Issues
· Lisa presented brief information about this topic from her research, but we did not discuss it or break out into groups for lack of time. Will be put on the next agenda.
· Lisa was also given more resources for further research - bylaws, posting a question to the cohousing-l list, cohousing books.
· Clarified why we are doing this now.
· Kim had a concern that we have brought this up only to table it several times, and that this is frustrating.

12. Future Agenda Items and Dates
· Sarah needs to leave next meeting by 5:30, so the AIM issues need to come up early.
· On March 3rd, only San will be here.
· On March 17th intro meeting, Dwight will run it if Catya cannot make it.
· Next week's facilitation workshop with Jerry: please arrive between 11:30 and 11:45 a.m. so that we can begin the workshop at Noon promptly.
· Cat probed to determine whether people might want to do a Passover Seder together (March 27th is the first Seder).
· Kim is proposing a women's-only bonding date for Mosaic women and suggests that the men might want to do the same thing.
· We might want to think about a Spring Retreat. If folks have ideas for a location, send them to Rosa.

13. Review of Meeting and Closing

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  Last modified: March 5, 2002