Mosaic Commons General Meeting Sunday, July 7, 2002, 3:30-6:30

Decisions:

• CoHousing Resources (CHR) will put an offer on the DeNormandy property with similar conditions to those of the Boxborough property.
• Decision: Group approved new budget developed by Chris. Price changes reflected here.
• Decision: Amendment to the Equity Membership Process: Any Equity member or Associate with serious concerns about a new membership must bring those concerns to the Conflict Resolution Team at least one week before the next meeting. See Requirements document for full process
• Decision: Make the first two pages of budget available to everyone and the details availbale to Mosaic Members and Associates. Interested prospective members can request the full budget.

Action Items:

Discussion:

0. Opening Activity. Question: What is your ideal vacation?
1. Review of colored cards and ground rules. Group decided to skip review since there were no new members present.
2. Announcements and approval of agenda. Agenda approved.
3. Review and approve minutes from previous meeting(s). The minutes were approved.
4. Land/Site Update

A) Maynard, T.B. Property -- Sherry is the Realtor. B.Q. is pretty excited but Chris was unable to nail down Sherry to get more details. Chris is somewhat concerned about Town Zoning. We have support from neighborhood, but we may have a fight on our hands with the town. Ben — What if we do some percentage of t he units affordable that helps the town reach its quotient w/o having to do 40B? Ben will look into this. Greg brought up the idea of the group buying a certain number of units as rentals in order to provide 40B units for people without our having to make a permanent place in the community w/o really knowing them. Group will look into this and continue discussion on line.

B) Boxborough–2-3 brothers own this property. They live in Texas and have rejected our offer. Roxanne–Do we know why they turned it down? Greg believes they thought it was going to be a long closing time without any financial incentives. Dave says we could get more info on the land (feasibility) and then make another offer on this property. Ben–What’s up with the property next to it? Kai–Owner of the small parcel is telling people that the other parcel can only handle one house, in order to let potential buyers know that they will not be living next to a development. Chris says there’s no basis for this statement. Greg thinks the septic issues here will not present any problems. Catya–How friendly is Boxborough to cohousing? What is zoning? San understands that Jim and Abby are doing some town-level research which may or may not include zoning. Ben–Uncomfortable spending money on a site that most people haven’t seen.

C) Stow–Nothing to report.

D) Lincoln Property, 55 acres. 30-45 acres may be wetlands. Chris believes this land is over-priced. Accessibility is tricky. Owners will not talk to anyone unless there’s an offer on the table. Chris suggests we do the offer tomorrow so he can converse with them soon.

What is our next step? Dave believes we should prioritize Lincoln. Marty–Because it’s so large we could cluster the housing. Catya–Unit count and clustering are both important considerations. Roxanne–The owner of the Lincoln property is a chair of the planning board and the other has been called the most influential person in Lincoln even though he doesn’t live there. Greg–Strongly supports pursuing the Lincoln site.

Proposal: Have CHR put an offer on the Lincoln property with similar conditions to those of the Boxborough property. (Passes as a decision).

5. Consideration of New Working Budget

new budget here (first two sheets) (full budget), new unit costs sheet here.

Chris has developed a new working budget for us due to increased costs in services of CHR. Our previous budget was 3 years old. Catya proposes that we adopt the new budget today after discussing it. We will then need to figure out how to make it work in terms of people’s financial contributions. Sarah and Greg–agree we need a new budget. Catya notes that the biggest jump on payments is in the 4 BR. The new budget is structured so that each unit will be paid for in 12 months time. 70% of households need to have made their 5% at the time of the construction loan. This budget will apply to all new Equity members from now on.

6. Bios, Part 2 - Greg, Ben. Catya and Dave facilitate and record bios.
7. Proposal: Equity Member Announcements, final draft. New language:
   
   People wishing to become Equity members should announce their intention to do so during the "announcements" portion of a general meeting, or in email to the group at least two weeks before a general meeting.

   The Current Associates and Equity Members will decide on the membership by consensus at the following meeting. All individual Equity Members must be present or give their proxy to a member of the Coordinating Team (San, Catya, Rosa). Decisions on Equity membership must be reached by consensus and cannot be taken to a vote.

   Any Equity Members or Associates with serious concerns about the new membership must bring those concerns to the Conflict Resolution Team at least one week before the next meeting.

   The Finance Team will contact households who have announced their intention to become equity members to determine if the household will use the standard payment schedule or make a custom arrangement. This contact will take place before the meeting in which the group is asked to come to consensus on the new membership.
   
   

8. And now for something completely different! Rosa facilitated a get to know you activity in which we paired up to discover 3 things in common and 3 things different about each other. Couples shared highlights with group to the laughter of everyone. This activty was followed by a 10-minute break.
   
   
9. Process Check-in

Catya–1) I feel we should automatically put 20 minutes for the Land Site updates b/c there are so many questions; 2) I thought we had agreed to send out a summary email ahead of the meeting to limit the amount of questions people need to ask during the Land Site presentation. Ben would like to find ways to eliminate time pressures during important discussions. San feels that 20 minutes for Land Site would be too long partly b/c there are so many questions and coments that sometimes lead the group off topic. Be n–There are two things going on. 1) conveying information and 2) making decisions on our direction. Sarah–Would it flow better if we let the person doing the report finish before we open it up to questions? Dave–We will try to be more organized in the future. Catya–During the break I noticed that the numbers on the new budget are incorrect and would like to change them and add a sentence about how these fees are structured in order to reach the goal in 12 months. (Approved).

10. Action Items. Roxanne stepped down from managing action items; Catya will take over for the time being.
11. Remaining Team Reports

Coordinating Team Report–Coordinating would like to divide Marketing and Membership responsibilities along the following lines: The job of Marketing will be to get people to come to an initial meeting; the job of Membership will be to get people to become Equity members.

1) Splitting Marketing Team up with Virginia, Joan, Christie, Rosa, and Catya on the marketing side (goal is to get people to come to Intro Meetings). Membership Team Stuff: Goal of the Team is to take people from Intro Meeting to Equity Membership. Who wants to be on it, other than Judy and Catya? Someone to head up social event stuff? We need someone to take over making follow-up calls after Intro Meetings (Kim was doing this); 2) Coordinating Team Report; 3) New Potluck Format; 4) If you are off-line please tell someone on Coordinating; 5) Paper goods.

Finance–Please send in money for cash call. There will be a new cash call soon. Kai–Chris recommends that we do not publish the details of the budget beyond page one. It reflects our assumptions about what we will pay for future contractors; this information could hurt us when we invite bids for services. Kai proposes that Associate and Equity members have access to the complete budget and that interested non-members can have it upon request. Catya notes that budget d eets are included in many areas and if we change our policy on disclosure we would have a lot to change. Proposal: To make the first two pages available to everyone and the deets be availbale to Mosaic Members and Associates. Interested prospective members can request the full budget.

Marketing–Making a video to use for Marketing efforts. Met recently and are revamping Marketing efforts. Virginia is new team facilitator.

0. Hot Topics: Political Signs and Evangelizing.

[link to docs on Evangilism and Political Signs]

Discussion:

Evangilism is trying to convert someone else to your religious or political viewpoint. Evangilism is crossing a boundary and invading someone’s space. Invading can be determined if the listener says stop and the speaker doesn’t. We need to make distinctions between people in the community and out of the community. We need to protect first amendment rights. We can curtail free speech. We’re talking about guidelines, not constiututional rights. We’re setting up guidelines for the behavior of how we will act with each other. We should consider this discussion to be internal; we cannot apply this or control the behavior of outsiders. The process by which we came up with the hot topics list was the result of a brainstorming process. An external policy might look like, ‘No religious, political, evangilism allowed,’ and an internal policy might look like, ‘No evangilizing allowed. If you feel like someone is evangilizing to you ask them to stop and if they don’t take it to the Conflict Resolution team.’ Rosa proposes that we use the Group 3 wording (see handout) for a draft of a guidleingf on evangilising. Roxanne would like to see the first 2 sentences of Group 2 included. Catya would like Group 1 as a header for the policy. Marty--It’s important to me that we do not create taboo topics and that we do not limit the definition of evangilising to just religious and political, but also lifestyle. Janice will create a draft policy on Evangilising and Soliciatation and post them on email.

1. Upcoming General Meetings: 7/21, 8/4, 8/18, 9/15, 9/29 (at Parmenter) - Intro Meetings: 7/21, 8/18, 9/15- Socials: nothing scheduled - CHR: Mon 7/15 at Christie & Ken’s house in Maynard (primarily Land Site Team, but open to interested Members & Associates), Weds 7/17 (Everyone), 6:30 pm at Homeport. Tours: Island Cohousing 7/14.
2. Review of Meeting & Closing

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Last modified: July 19, 2002