Process minutes: 2019-04-10

Minutes:

4/10/2019
Process cmtee meeting
7-8:15pm, CH sitting room
Present: Jillian, Patti, Bob

Agenda:
1.Check-ins
2. Monkey Review
3. Standing aside and blocking discussion item for upcoming meeting
4. Choose, assign, and request time for some refreshing policy moments this
next season
5. Next meeting
Did not get to
6. Review our minute taking guidelines and potentially bring to GO for
discussion, given desire for summary versions and other discussion at
12/5/18 cmty meeting

2. Monkeys
MONKEY Patti bringing chocolate for the two community meetings a month.
Re-MONKEY Sarah to share their handouts and powerpoint for the facilitation
training to the Process cmtee google folder in drive. (See 3/19/16 Process
minutes)(Feb 2016 Training)
ONGOING MONKEY: facilitators - when there’s a new proposal, or discussion
of any new idea, ask for clarifying questions, then ask for positive
reflections about it, before they go into discussion of concerns.
ONGOING MONKEY: Schedule a few refreshing policy moments:
o Blocking - Refreshing policy moment but also more discussion probably.
o Parking
o Expectations for interacting with visitors (from New Member Packet)
o Cleaning up after yourself in the CH / Expectations for teen and youth
cmty work, CH access, and supervision
o Review of GO proposal and decision-making processes and revisiting
decisions
o Overview of BOA and how to search for agreements - demo
o Minutes must be emailed to their minutes email address for the BOA and
to talk.
o Refreshing policy moment on empowered committees
o Go over our community meeting guidelines
RE-MONKEY: Jillian will add to the BOA updater job description, tracking if
committees are sending in minutes, and if community meeting minutes are in
there too.
Re-MONKEY even though DONE - had no response: Jillian will check in with
buildings, see if they would be willing to present to the community about
the committee structure they have been trying
Re-MONKEY: Jillian to ask Sarah and Mary if they would share the actual
google docs and slides of their consensus refresher presentation with
Process, not just the PDFs, if they are willing.
Re-MONKEY: Jillian will look up what we already do have in writing about
blocks and bring to a process meeting so we can shape a discussion agenda
item for an upcoming community meeting.
Re-MONKEY: process to modify our mandate template to add method of decision
making
Re-MONKEY: Willie and Yi-miau to work together, maybe one committee at a
time, they will work together.
Re-MONKEY: Yi-miau will mark the expired agreements as expired.
Re-MONKEY: In light of 12/5/19 community meeting discussion, review our
existing minute taking guidelines.
ONGOING for a little while: Per request at the last meeting by new people,
facilitators to please bring out the meeting guidelines poster and actually
go over it at the start of meetings. They should please go over facilitator
guidelines too, even if we don’t have a poster. Should explain things like,
that facilitators are managing the stack and that they can adjust the order
to call on people as needed. (Could still write the stack down on a
whiteboard but the facil could choose to change the order.)
Re-MONKEY: Bob will check with Sunward membership about what they plan to
do with the FIC-recorded diversity conversation. Maybe Sunward book club
will want to start something? Membership will discuss.
MONKEY: Jilian will ask Willie and yi-Miau - re minutes and agreements,
when we go to
www.gocoho.org and follow any links to Policies or BOA it requires a login
- is that new?
DONE: Jillian will email work to transfer Willie’s BOA tech job to Yimiau
DONE: Willie will email Tom to check in about timing for BOA in Gather.
DONE: Jillian will send Sarah the meeting dates and roles when known.
MONKEY: Sarah will ask Hermann for his childcare assignments.
MONKEY: Put initial skills and thrills discussion on upcoming community
meeting agenda.
DONE: Jillian will send out date survey for process jobs.
MONKEY: Next work season, assess if process convenor should get different
amount of credit, add another job for 1 hour for convenor, and add a
Process member to be assigned two?
MONKEY: Patti will email Sarah for a 40 minute item for future agenda to
discuss stand asides and blocks - likely June as soonest.
MONKEY: Jillian will email Sarah about Monday to see if time for refreshing
policy moment on Visitors (from New Member Packet) and Picking up outside
(from Living Well With Children agreements).

3. Standing aside and blocking discussion item for upcoming meeting

In blocking you must make a case for something being harmful to the
community. But we don’t say anything about, others have to see it, to agree
that is a community level block rather than a personal interest. We have no
language about “validating” the block, if a certain number of others have
to agree that it is a community-level interest. Currently left to the
facilitator. Not an incentive for new folks to facilitate. But we have had
a culture of people not blocking, of being able to talk through things,
being able to come up with solutions to meet the most needs. So this has
not been an issue. Yet it could be an issue in future.

Also we don’t have in writing, info about consequences if you do have a
valid block - do you have to help create a solution.

These have been understood, as a culture kind of thing, and we have used
consensus well for the most part. But do we want to bring back our Info on
Stand asides and blocks for discussion, and see if people want a proposal
and not just an “info” item/guideline.

Could bring a discussion item, start with history, using consensus.

Am having trouble remembering if we ever had a block; we’ve had to slow
down discussions, delay calling the question for more discussion time, lay
things down for a while. But people have assumed that we have more written
down than we do I think. We’ve done trainings but those are not the same
thing as process agreements.

To “workshop” this, we’d have to break this out more, step by step, and
take it to small groups, and have small groups grapple, like:

The “not too many” stand asides question, are we good with leaving that
vague still
Is it really true you are absolved from implementing decision if you stand
aside
If the person does not remove block, the decision does not move forward -
is that ok as is or do we need a clearer “block validation” process
Do we require someone who blocks to work on solution in any formal way.

A danger is we don’t want to develop policy for the “worst cases” and
culture of fear. We want to have awareness of issues and enough of a
framework to operate in. We’ve not had a formal block, we’ve not had a
formal policy revisited.

Could start with a discussion of the values and history. We don’t
necessarily recommend any changes to what we’ve been operating with, and
yet, we have been exposed with two other communities who have struggled
mightily with issues around consensus, blocking, and valid blocks.

We don’t want to be naive but we don’t want to be driven by fear. We want
to have a good process in place for when the going gets tough.

I think its a 40 minute item at least. Not even sure how much interest
there is in it. Knowing how many of us are new it might be. Put it like a
decision making review, and discussion.

Realistically this would be June meeting, June 17, before we could have a
big chunk of time - next meeting is Youth Engagement, meeting after is
Basement access coming back I think.

MONKEY: Patti will email Sarah for a 40 minute item for future agenda to
discuss stand asides and blocks - likely June as soonest.


4. Choose, assign, and request time for some refreshing policy moments this
next season

o Review of GO revisiting decisions agreement - called the Agreement
Reconsideration agreement actually. Should we do this one before some of
the others - help people understand the course of action if a current
agreement does not seem to be meeting the needs any more. It’s a bit wordy
and clunky but we could revisit it in a more straightforward way.

o Pet Policy and Cat Clause
It would be good to go over the pet policy and and the cat clause. Maybe
for a later meeting, after we have looked at the Agreement Reconsideration
agreement.

o Expectations for interacting with visitors (from New Member Packet)
might be good to combine with the:
o Cleaning up after yourself in the CH and also picking up outdoors

This becomes a hot topic in summer. This is what it says in the Ground
section of New Member packet:

Visitors
If you see someone you don’t know around the community, it is reasonable to
introduce yourself and ask if you can help that person, and if they are a
cohousing member or guest
It is a community norm to try to strike a balance of friendliness,
fairness, openness and safety
It is all right to explain our policies and norms to visitors who are not
following them

This isn’t really a policy though - its a practice, its a cultural norm.
I feel that Process is charged with reminding people about the agreements
we have about living together. These are not always policies.

Its spring, could combine picking up stuff outside and interacting with
visitors, a spring update. Maybe we should do this one now since its
seasonal.

We do have an actual agreement about all picking up stuff on pedway.

So we could do the blurb from new member packet, and the picking up stuff
agreement (from Living Well with Children weekend, was two long weekends.)

MONKEY: Jillian will email Sarah about Monday to see if time for refreshing
policy moment on Visitors (from New Member Packet) and Picking up outside
(from Living Well With Children agreements).

o Overview of BOA and how to search for agreements - demo

o Refreshing policy moment on empowered committees
This isn’t really a refreshing policy moment, its committee by committee.
Could do a refreshing policy moment on what does it mean, and we just
clarified how decisions could be challenged. This is a bit less charged
than it was I think.

o Parking
More of an issue in winter but at some point. But there’s the lower lot
question.


5.Next meeting
May 13, 7pm
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