Steering minutes: 2011-02-06

Minutes:

Minutes of    Steering    Committee Meeting

2-6-11



Present:        Gail, Willie, Judith, Sarah, Katie, Kathy, Jim, Amy

Guests:        Rusty from TS, Ellie





1.                    Report from Touchstone - Part I –Willie



Willie attended a recent TS    steering    meeting as GO’s ambassador.        TS
is going to do 2 three-month work seasons and will get in synch with
GO’s work seasons by September.         This will make it easier to align
our meals shift scheduling.



Jim said he thought it would be more convenient if we had work seasons
that ran from Nov-March, the snow season, and April-July and
August-October, to coincide with the growing season.        No one    offered
to take this forward but it's interesting to think about.



2.                    Filling convener jobs – Katie



Gail brought the 2003 convener description as a historical artifact.
Later in the meeting, there was discussion about Process bringing this
forward at a community meeting to remind people of the vision we had
early on for conveners taking a fairly limited role, mainly around
making sure meetings were scheduled, facilitated, and minutes taken,
and tracking monkeys and budget.



Katie has been Grounds convener for some time and is burned out.        She
would like to step down, but feels uncomfortable doing so because
there is no one in line to take the convenership when she steps back,
and she doesn’t feel right about leaving Grounds without a succession
plan.            She is looking for support from    Steering.



Suggestions included:



• Take care of your own needs first; leave the convenership to the
work allocation process.        Committees tend to go in cycles of energy.

• Invitation to Katie to think about what portions of the Grounds
convener job she’d be interested in continuing to do; discuss with the
community what the job would have to look like for others to do it.
Possibly split up the job or the committee’s responsibilities in some
way to make it more manageable.

Katie was praised for her hard work as Grounds convener.



It was noted that a similar problem exists with other committees, in
which the convener takes on increasing amounts of work, gets burned
out, but doesn’t have anyone to hand off to.



There was discussion about creating more one-time positions for
specific projects, to take some of the burden off conveners and
committees with a lot to do.        It was acknowledged that Grounds has a
lot of responsibility, both for landscaping and for maintenance items
such as pavement, lights, etc.



It can also be frustrating when a committee has a long list of things
to do, and then an unexpected issue comes up that derails the other
projects.



The example in which Jillian convened the Work Committee for just one
season was mentioned.        She brought new objectivity and also limited
the amount of work she was willing to do.        Up to this point we have
tended to think that only people from within the committee could be
conveners because they would know the committee's history, but here is
an example where the convener played a valuable organizing role
without having all the history.     Maybe we need to rethink our
assumptions.     Gail pointed out that theSteering    Convener does not need
to serve on another committee, for example.



Grounds will work with Process to figure out how to move forward on this.



3.                        Report from Touchstone – Part II - Rusty

Rusty brought a new TS contact list for GO’s use.



The February 3 GO-TS Summit was cancelled for lack of agenda items.
Should we think about an April date for the next one?            Rusty will
check with Tom I. and others to see if they will be ready to report on
the traffic project on an April Saturday, and will set a date,
avoiding the school holiday and Easter.



Rusty’s sense is that the TS meals worker situation is better, that
people are showing up for work more reliably, but she wanted to check
whether this is so?        Willie reported that it is improving, but there
are still some problems.            GOers    are supposed to call Maggi to report
any shifts missed by TS meals workers.    Rusty will check with Maggi to
find out what she has been hearing.



The other issue is about TS signing up to use GO CH spaces.            Rusty
had heard that there was a snafu in this regard, in which a TS
community meeting conflicted with a GO individual’s reservation. Rusty
had the impression that TS community meetings take precedence, but she
didn’t know whether this is accurate.



Willie said he had reviewed the agreement to share the GO-CH with TS
and there was no mention of TS meetings taking precedence over other
reservations.        We talked about sharing the GO policy on reservations
with TS.        It’s pretty much first-come, first-served.



Jim reported that this item will be on the CH Committee agenda when it
meets later this week.        Rusty will brief Maryanne from TS, who will be
attending the CH meeting.        It sounds like some negotiation is still
needed.        TS has already arranged to hold some committee meetings in TS
units when GO spaces are not available, but it’s harder for them to do
when it’s an entire community meeting with 30 people.     They can't fit
into anyone's unit.



Rusty reported that TS currently does not have a Process Committee.
They are thinking about implementing new ideas about governance
learned from sessions with Laird Schaub, but this may take some time.



Willie will attend TS    Steering    Meetings on 2/23 and 4/20.


One more thing:        Adi created a password for TS people to use the
computer in the GO-CH without needing to use GO’s password.        So now TS
people can use the GO-CH computer.        This is much appreciated.



4.                    Check in on meeting day and time



Everyone was fine with continuing to meet on first Sundays at 5 pm,
except for        April, when we’ll meet on the 10th    so interested members
can attend the FestiFools Parade on the 3rd.



5.                    Committee Reports



Buildings is making a spreadsheet to record the history of all the
fire suppression problems we have had, including locations and who
repaired.        They are almost done.                All bathroom fans need to be
vented through the roof.



MONKEY:        Amy will send Buildings the notes she took on this subject at
Steve Bredernitz’s presentation on the Skills and Thrills weekend.



Judith succeeded in getting the keys in the Knox boxes!        Hurrah.



Refrigerator circuits are going to be replaced sometime soon in units
that want to pay for it.



Meals didn’t meet last month.        Gail recently sent out a plea for
people to pay their Meals bills early, to put more money in the
account so cooks could be reimbursed.



Membership – Catherine doing a great job keeping the committee on
task.        She organized Wednesday’s community meeting about relationships
with non-GO kids on campus and the GO relationship with Lakestone.
These conversations will continue.



F&L – Carl and Aaron are finishing up the final steps around the
Reserve study.        The review of our association insurance is also almost
done.        Latest development is that the status quo looks best in terms
of insuring the shared garage with Touchstone.        This will make it very
clear who pays the deductible and increased premiums in the event of a
claim.        The committee is now turning its attention to Master Deed
changes.        After that, it will rework its committee mandate.



Process – Developing a committee self-evaluation process – looking at
mandates, how do you think the community responds to your committee,
how do you respond to community concerns.        Process wills start with
its own self-evaluation, then go to InfoCo, then pass it on.            Sarah
said that Membership could be another candidate, as they are planning
to look at their mandate in the coming months.        Other committees, such
as F&L, are also looking at their mandates.



Work Committee has two new members, Gayle Turner and Kendra Pyle.        A
member recently left the community and Work Com has been working at
finding replacement shifts for this person.        Contingency shifts are
drying up – Willie may soon go to the rest of the community to ask for
help, or may have to cancel meals.        Good discussion about contingency
labor at a recent community meeting.        The proposal will come back at
the next meeting.            Next move:        define more specifically what a quota
is and how you ask for a reduced quota.        Related but possibly for
later attention:        eligibility.        Who do we expect to contribute work?



CH – Jim missed the last committee meeting.        Nothing to report.



6.                    Other business - none

7. Next meeting - March 6 at 5 pm.