Mosaic Commons General Meeting
March 17, 2002 3:30-6:30

Decisions:

• Greg Hellyer became an Associate Member today. Yay!
• We will revisit the Equity Payment policy as soon as we adopt a new working budget or at the 2nd meeting in September 2002.
• Revised a section of the Associate Requirements: "Be familiar with the history and process of creating cohousing. To do that, we recommend you review the cohousing.org website and that you read Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves by Kathryn McCamant & Charles Durrett and The Cohousing Handbook: Building a Place for Community by Chris Hanson."
• Dwight will contact the lawyer in California to come up with a proposal for the LLC to accept loans.
• We have decided to hire Chris as our Project Manager.

Action Items:

Discussion:

Agenda

1. Special Event: Mark Lampson from BankNorth here to talk about mortgage qualification

He didn't show.

2. Opening Activity

We had a large group so did a quick go around with names and answering the question "What about Spring are you looking forward to the most?"

3. Review of colored cards and ground rules

Rosa did so

4. Announcements and approval of agenda

Agenda approved

Greg Hellyer became an Associate Member today. Yay!

5. Review and approve minutes from previous meetings

We needed to approve the minutes from Feb. 17, March 3, and the minutes from the meeting with Chris Scott Hanson - All Approved.

6. Follow-up to membership meeting

Discussed and processed this since it came up on the general mosaic list.

Dwight says, there are several lessons that we, as a group, need to take away:

1 - increase the participation during mentoring process and perhaps we need to reconsider the optional nature of having a mentor

2 - need for a conflict resolution process, which we don't currently have.

Janice seconds the need for more mentoring... It is better to have ongoing feedback rather than an 'annual review'

John would like to take on proposing a conflict resolution process.

Cat says we might want to consider coming up with the conflict resolution policy during a workshop.

Some people who weren't privy to this process had several questions about what happened. We decided that it was not appropriate to discuss the confidential details behind the decision.

7. Proposal to revise associates requirement

Catya proposed changing this in the associates requirements:

Be familiar with the history and process of creating cohousing. To do that, we recommend you review the cohousing.org website and that you read Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves by Kathryn McCamant & Charles Durrett and The Cohousing Handbook: Building a Place for Community by Chris Hanson."

Proposal approved by consensus

8. Revisiting Equity Contributions

Dwight proposed that we consider this in relation to the budget that CSH is going to be creating for us soon. Our current equity contributions are based upon the old budget provided by CSH.

Kai says that he agrees with Dwight, that we might want to revise our contributions when we adopt a new working budget.

Perhaps we should revise the wording:

"We will revisit the Equity Payment policy as soon as we adopt a new working budget or at the 2nd meeting in September 2002." Approved

9. Stow Land

Dave visited the site about a week ago. He says about 2/3 of the property is open fields. The southern side of the property is wooded on a hillside. Property includes the hill and part of the other side of the hill. Many horse tracks in the woods. It is being actively farmed, but is unoccupied. Two waterways and a irrigation pond. Dave liked the land, but is guardedly optimistic.

(See the notes from 3/11 with CSH)

Options:

1. buy the land on our own

2. buy the land and team up with a developer

Have to go for a 40b in order to get enough units on the property.

Question from Delia: Is this absolutely sure that there would be no zoning board of appeals option to change the zoning to residential only? Dave answered that the 40b is almost a sure thing, and the town wants us to do this rather than push to change the zoning. The town of Stow is at 5.5% affordable and they need to be at 10% affordable.

What is the cost of the 40b process? Is there a down side - could it fail to be approved? Answer: there is a nominal filing fee, but the most of the cost would be paying lawyers. If we do it in a manner that is friendly to the town, they probably won't oppose it. Dwight further answers that if we don't get the 40b approval, our risk is minimal because we can resell the land. The advice that we've had from Chris is that we could recover our costs in the resale if the market stays good. Kai further clarifies that the reason the risk is somewhat lower is that we believe that the asking price is lower than market value.

Why are they willing to sell this property below market value? Can't go into detail right now without going into characteristics.

What is the definition of Sr.? And would it have to be separate from us? The definition is 55 and above. Sr. Housing has to be ALL seniors so our project won't qualify.

Ben asked about being forced to take certain people who meet the affordable housing process - Kim is trying to clarify this, but says it is possible that we might end up with a lottery. Cat believes that we might be able to find enough people to meet the affordable requirements within the group. Can the town step in, upon resale, and take control of the unit? Kim doesn't know this answer, she does know that the unit has to stay affordable for an amount of time. Do we know how we might lose control? No, we don't' know these answers yet.

What about pesticides? Greg thinks we could get quicker and simpler answers. He says that the exposure risk is not as high if we're just going to be building on the land, but if we want to farm it again it becomes more of an issue.

What about sprawl? Greg's perspective is that building cohousing is the best kind of development that can happen, if the land is going to be developed.

Steph asked about people's feelings about doing the dual project. Most responded that they feel like the benefits outweigh the downsides greatly. John also feels like we should be somewhat cautious about this. Some people are concerned about what might happen to the other 1/2 of the land once we sell it, but Dwight clarifies that we'll know that this is going to be a Sr.housing project.

Kim talked to the potential developer yesterday. He thinks that we should lock in the land sooner than later because we can have 30-40 days for free, potentially, and then $1000/month during feasibility after that (probably).

Bridgett asked, if money were no object, would we be considering selling off part of the land? Maybe, maybe not, but probably yes - the possibility of getting the land for free and lowering our unit costs is very appealing and probably too much to give up. There would be at least one equity member who would block a 40unit project.

John asks people to email him with questions for the Wednesday Conference Call with Chris.

If the 40B falls through, we might be able to proceed with a smaller development, or we might be able to get a zoning variance, or we might be able to flip the land at a profit.

There were some details from Chris that we were wanting before making a decision on the land, but we haven't received any further information from him.

Kai proposes that we should go ahead and make a decision about tying up the land, but we can't decide on the particular model at this point because we don't have enough information on whether we can afford it or not.

Cat observes that it doesn't appear that we have a decision to be made today because we don't have enough information. John needs to contact Chris for this information ASAP. We may need to use our urgent decisions process to do this.

Rosa suggests that we table a decision until we have more information and use our urgent decisions process.

We seem to be unclear on whether Chris is putting together a letter of intent or a more formal offer that may become the Purchase and Sale. John believes that we're making an offer on earnest money. We don't know if we're going to need 10k or 50k for the earnest money. We need from Chris: Cost of the land, timing, etc.

As soon as we have more information from Chris on the offer, we will implement the Urgent Decisions process - John will provide the information to the group from Chris and Rick will gather the consensus information from Equity Members and Associates.

BREAK

10. Process Check-in

Cat said that she was surprised more people didn't come forward to become an Associate. Several people said they intend to become an Associate in the upcoming weeks, but feel that they need to get to know the group more and take on more action items.

Some people said that they feel awkward without the tables. Greg suggested it might work to have the tables behind them. We'll try a few different seating arrangements over the upcoming meetings.

11. 40B Issues

Income levels: there are two - one for 1 to 2 people in the households one for more.

Stow has 6 or 7 other projects out there that have expressed interested for 40b, but they have no formal proposals yet . It is unclear how they would deal with it if they feel overwhelmed with the number of applications they have. Stow does know about our interest in this land and they are interested in us, but we do have some competition.

Our project could be more attractive with the Sr. Housing project.

Kim will research what the asset limit is for 40b as well.

Kim is still doing copious amounts of research on this subject

12. Financial Status

Dwight sent out an email asking for this long term information - didn't get enough responses. The information is needed in order to determine which development model to use. The upshot, however, is that it looks like we will not have the money that we will need for the 1st year: $150 - $200,000. Some people said "if this happens, we might be able to provide more money" or "we can't make a decision for that far out."

Do we know how much money we'll need at what point? No, we don't. Cat would really like to know this answer. It would be very helpful to know so she can determine what the risk level is.

Catya called Chris to clarify: $50k promised now, pay in 60 days. Shepherding: sign on 4/15, start paying $12-15K per month June 1st for 3-4 months - this includes the 40b process and feasibility.

>From what has been heard so far, we don't have this money yet.

One associate clarified that he would be able to provide a good sum of money from his retirement fund, but can't take it out until P&S.

We are about 50% off from the initial earnest money needed in the next 30-60days. This is VERY low risk money - it is usually held in escrow.

At what point can we depend on not paying the $5k per month to Chris? As soon as the land is secure, project management fees are included in the project cost. (Secure = Purchase and Sale)

During the responses that were received, there were several people who are not currently equity members who offered substantial capital. This is wonderful, but a problem because we don't currently have a mechanism to receive money from non-equity members. This needs to be remedied! We need to come up with a process to accept loans that are refundable as capital in the project, should the person decide to become an equity member and if they don't it is a loan and we need to determine what the conditions of this loan would be. A note would be need to be written up. We need to make sure we can safeguard ourselves - this places an obligation on the LLC to repay money and this can be overwhelming. We need to consult a lawyer on this - can use the attorney whose time we purchased at the cohousing conference.

Proposal: Contact the lawyer in California to come up with a proposal for the LLC to accept loans. Approved

Cat would like us to consider extending the early incentive money.

13. Project Management Path

We have decided to hire Chris as our Project Manager. Approved by consensus.

It was noted that people do have some concerns about the need to be in very close contact with him in order to get timely information - but we prefer him over the other options.

14. Action Items

Sarah said there was no need to review the action items during this meeting. She is probably going to implement some deadlines on some action items with people.

15. Team Reports

Affordability

Report was covered above

Coordinating

No report

Finance

Cash Call: It has been met.

Marketing/Website

Cat handed out a new resource sheet for how to use the website and mailing lists.

Secretary

No report

16. Review/Establish time, place, agenda items for next meeting and social event

• 3/31/02 - Social: Seder at Homeport, arrive at 5:00
• 4/7/02 3:30-6:30 General Meeting - Parmenter
• 4/21/02 1:00-3:00 Intro (Janice will assist) - Parmenter
• 4/21/02 3:30-6:30 General Meeting - Parmenter
• 5/5/02 3:30-6:30 General Meeting - Parmenter
• 5/19/02 1:00-3:00 Intro meeting: (Kai to lead if Cat can't come, Sarah to assist) - Parmenter
• 5/19/02 3:30-6:30 General Meeting - Parmenter
• Retreat: People need to answer the poll for date preferences.
• Chris in town April 4th-8th : John will find out when we can meet with him.

17. Review of Meeting and Closing

Everyone did a great job covering a great deal of business and emotional material!

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Last modified: March 22, 2002