Process minutes: 2019-06-20

Minutes:

6/20/2019
Process cmtee meeting
6:45-8:15pm, CH sitting room
Present: Patti, Bob, Jillian, Mary King for first 10 minutes

Agenda:
1.Check-ins
2. Monkey Review
3. Report back from Cohousing Conf
4. Discussion item from YEH committee
Did not get to:
Update on Agreement reconsideration
Update on StandAsides / blocks discussion
Skills and Thrills agenda request
Go over our current minute taking guidelines
Next meeting

2. Monkeys
ONGOING MONKEY Patti bringing chocolate for the two community meetings a
month.
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 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.)
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: process to modify our mandate template to add method of decision
making
ONGOING MONKEY: Willie and Yi-miau to work together on getting the missing
minutes back into the BOA, 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.
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: Jillian 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?
Re-MONKEY: Put initial skills and thrills discussion on upcoming community
meeting agenda.
MONKEY: For the 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?
Re-MONKEY: Patti will email Sarah for a 40 minute item for future agenda to
discuss stand asides and blocks - likely June as soonest.
DONE: Bob will make sure tech cmtee knows that the web site email does not
seem to go anywhere, Bob sent test messages that never came through.
MONKEY: Jillian will work on draft of Agreement Reconsideration Agreement
to add more structure and will email to Process. And then will email Sarah
to ask for agenda time for 20 minute discussion decision.

3. Report back from Cohousing conference in Portland, Oregon
Patti went, as well as Mary King, Sarah, Peggy

Governance, affordability, and aging were three themes Patti focused on.

A lot of coho have moved away from using consensus fully. They have
consensus based decisions but they have people who are not able to work
together in that way, and so they have to change their process. As happened
at Sunward. Also happened with the ICC.

Next coho conf will be in May 2021, and they want to do it in Ann Arbor!
Likely 2nd weekend in May.

There are a dozen coho communities in Portland area! Amazing. All of those
communities provided housing. But when its in A2 will have to be at a
hotel.

Was 500 this year. Figuring in midwest, first time in midwest, lots of
forming communities. So probably smaller, more like 350.

Visited other communities - kitchen redesign about hanging pots but they’re
too heavy, but want to use that upper space. So people hang all the
utensils! Some great kitchens.

Patti stayed in an ecovillage, renovated apartments. Still being
constructed.

Patti was not able to go to the senior cohousing highrise downtown.
There’s a lot of coho communities that have no children - not by intention,
but they priced themselves out. Affordability was a big thing.

Bob working on aging in place initiatives, set up circles of support.

Also Bob is ambassador to TS and SW. Working on spreadsheet. Has all TS
committees on it and contact people, wants to do the same for all three
communities. Make it easier to collaborate. On different work seasons but
help communicate cross communities.

What if we had a convenor email address that did not change? So then it has
to be updated every six months but there would be incentive to do so. The
ICC rolled out standard emails, not without issues but can be worth it.

I’d like us to seriously explore a 501c3 again, could have a drive. We have
so many resources floating out there. What if we had an AA coho site for
shared doc.

Wasn’t there a project related to this?Elph has a task this summer to work
on migrating documents.

4. Mary King visited Process meeting as a rep from YEH.

YEH feels that all the things that need to happen under YEH are really
supposed to happen under other committees. Eg Youth in work should be part
of Work cmtee. So they are thinking they should dissolve as a separate
committee.

YEH wants a new position in work system of youth accountability liaison but
thinks it should live under an existing committee. Maybe Process / Conflict
Resolution Committee? Maybe Common House? Maybe Membership? Ensuring that
youth who use the common house and other common areas are aware of the
rules. Works with youth and families. Puts together accountability plans
and monitors them when there are issues and enforces consequences.

Eg youth had someone sleep over in CH recently. Person managing the
accountability agreement has to engage the parent and child and
communicate. Unique position and important one.

Swift and appropriate sanctions. Sanctions sometimes developed together
with teen. As CH committee used to do for quite a while. Idea is embedding
these different positions into other committees. Meets goal in community of
not having an additional committee. Pay attention to work in work system,
maybe in CRC area, in outreach and engagement activities ie membership.

Is that person part of CRC committee? Could be.

YEH feels this youth accountability liaison position is needed.

Person who does this will get texts about what’s going on in CH all the
time.

Not 100% clear what committee it should be under.

Regardless of where this position “lands”, CH cmtee needs to be kept in the
loop about what’s going on.

Mary King had to leave to go to buildings cmtee meeting.

Much of this is CH related but this could expand past CH cmtee, eg parking
lot issues.

CRC is Terrence, Yi-miau, Bob.

Bob is on CRC, Process, and Membership but is moving to TS. For now will
stay on CRC?

Could live under any of the three committees. Could check in with CRC
periodically even if not part of CRC.

Maybe it should be part of CRC so that they’re not on their own.

Seems like things come in waves for CRC.

YEH is saying that most important is this accountability liaison, but that
may or may not be true now - We have 7 teens graduating high school. Maybe
the next thing is really about involving kids starting from a young age...

A lot of communities have kids committees. Like what started with kids room
repainting. And the games - basketball, and broom ball was all ages.

The late message about fairy camp is a good example about the need for
communication. There have been camps here before, different parents have
done all kinds of things. If there were a kids committee that included
adults and children, could be a subcommittee of fun or membership or stand
alone. Thinking about young people’s relationship with the community.

So maybe we’re disagreeing with them that they should dissolve. They were
focused on teens, but the long term is about keeping kids involved… How do
we not have a teen problem 5 years from now.

The TV room for example, has become a teen room but we have not designed it
for that, we could do that. Pull out carpeting etc.

Many cohousing communities do have a teen space, where they can come and
hang out.

They were proposing a lot of work positions, so there was pushback. But if
there was a committee with both youth and adults?

Maybe this is a community level discussion. If YEH’s takeaway from the last
community meeting was to dissolve itself, maybe the community should
discuss?

In my experience you need a separate committee as well as every committee
dealing with it too. Like diversity - you need a diversity committee in
organizations like my work, to spearhead the effort. That constituency of
the committee is always poking everyone else to remind the other committees
they should be working on it.

Kids are not at the community meetings, their input has to be sought out
for things. The storytelling position for example was great.

Kids making decisions about their own kinds of stuff, using a parallel
process. That’s how kids committees work. You have to start them young.
Now’s a good time - we have 5 to 9 year olds. Process cmtee won’t be
thinking about that, or Work, or Ch…

Once a month kids plan a meal, was done at another coho community. Often
breakfast for dinner.

What could be handed off to a kids group, to manage. Be it a once a month
meal, or a space in the CH, etc. Decide on activities each week. Or manage
a budget for crafts or toys.

Maybe it is managing the kids room. Maybe Emily would do it as a head cook,
coordinate a meal with kids.

I think YEH should being it back to community to discuss. If they want to
Process is happy to meet with YEH.

I don’t think community did not want YEH, maybe just that the scale of it
was too large.

Emily is convenor of YEH and for membership.

I did not know this would be on our agenda, so I did not read the YEH
proposal and I did not read the minutes. So I don’t feel like I can say
clear opinion about what they should do or say to community at the moment,
but makes sense to me that the community will want to discuss.

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