Finance & Legal minutes: 2007-04-23

Agenda:

- Cash flow
- LCE/GCE

Minutes:

Finance Cmtee Meeting 23 Apr 07 Minutes
Present: Elph, Adi, Judith, Tracy, Pam Minutes: Judith

Monkey: Tracy will print the payment plan form, It will be included
with the monthly statement and put in cubbies. Judith will figure out
how to hang it near the payment box.

Cash flow:

We received 17 thoughtful responses to our message about our worry over
late association fees. Tracy is compiling responses. Elph has spoken
with people from other communities. Adi has done research on
cohousing-L.

What is happening is not good for the community. We need to find a way
to make it better for the community. We, as a community need to work
together to try different approaches. We will try a bunch of ideas:
some will work, some won't. Clear communication is going to be important
to keeping us connected as a community. The amount short needs to be
shown in relationship to our expenses. Our cash flow is affected, and
we need to address this. Ideas: cut budget, project losses, keep
reminding people to make a plan, work with Caring Committee to make the
plan, have a community discussion,

Pam's ideas from caring committee: share with people the benefits of
making a plan and the tools for doing it, bring Kathryn Greiner to hold
a debt-reduction class, caring committee use budget to help people out,
work with people who have identified their needs,

Because of strong feedback it looks clear that the community is not
ready to move into sharing names of people past due on their association
fees. Some finance members have a sense that this creates a barrier to
addressing the issue together as a community in a caring way. We will
continue to develop ideas. We will look into budget adjustments as one
idea.

We will present something at the next community meeting. Pam will
present, as caring committee rep. We want to be helpful.

What we want to talk about at the next community meeting: full
understanding, helping people get into better situations, this will be
on-going - we are going to try some things and see what works. We do
not want to be adversarial. We want to make the financial situation
better for individuals and for community. Would it make sense to revive
Affordability Committee? Other communities are having the same problems.

Monkey: Tracy will print the payment plan form, It will be included
with the monthly statement and put in cubbies. Judith will figure out
how to hang it near the payment box.

LCE/GCE: we now have the written notes from the last meeting and will
be looking them over in preparation for presenting at a future meeting.