Process minutes: 2008-10-14

Agenda:

Process Cmtee meeting
10/14/2008
7-8pm, CH sitting room

Agenda
1. Checkins
2. Monkey review
3. Process budget 2009
4. Quorum
5. Training
6. Check in with grounds about their landscape plan weekend event?
7. Next meeting

Minutes:

Present: Jillian, Gail

2. Monkeys/Cooler/Freezer items from previous meetings:

MONKEY and COOLER: Process to ask minute takers to come to a process meeting
at the start of each work term to talk about the full minute taker job
description, and talk about the using names issue so they are aware of some
of nuances.

COOLER:
Discussion about how CRC members are chosen, is that working ok?

COOLER: Naming names in committee meeting minutes, periodically reread
current guidelines, make sure they're ok for both committees and plenary

Ongoing MONKEY: CRC should talk about the fact that they can't all to rotate
off at the same time. What are the current CRC members each thinking about
their terms, who is willing to continue? If everyone wants to continue for a
while that's great, its just that when folks do want to rotate off it needs
to be staggered.

MONKEY: Catherine will check in with the two groups of folks who said they'd
be willing to work on the kids and the CH issues and bring it back to the
community.

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MONKEYS from the previous meeting 9/4/2008:

Re-MONKEY: Jillian will send out an email reminder about Member Resources
fund being available for classes/workshops, remind people about NASCO.

Re-MONKEY (?): Catherine will put out an email about Member Resources to
talk about the library: if anyone has come across a book or game that the
think would be of use to GOers and good to have in the Community library to
let process know, could be related to all kinds of topics (gardening,
cooking, energy, etc) not just process.

DONE: Jillian will see about making a few photo prints, look at anniversary
group shots.

Re-MONKEY: Jillian will lay out our vision statement in Indesign and provide
to Catherine.

DONE: Catherine will look into multiple colors and how that would affect
size/format we provide.

DONE (?): Catherine will pick up another flip chart pad.

DONE: Jillian will check in with Grounds about a date for their planning
day, and also make sure they know that the full amount of money is available
to them, $1700.

DONE: Jillian will email proposed 2009 process budget, to budget at gocoho.org

DONE: Gail will look back at the original Quorum agreements. Including
double checking that renters can be part of the budget discussions and
quorum for that, they just can't block. And Gail will check in with Sarah,
did she do some quorum counting in the past? Infoco said they thought it
might be useful to have some data about how much we have reached quorum over
the years.

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MONKEYS from this meeting, 10/14/2008

MONKEY: Gail will count attendance at meetings 2005-2008.

MONKEY: Jillian will check if quorum is in the bylaws.

MONKEY: Gail will put a quorum discussion in the queue, start with a 20
minute discussion, reflections on how quorum is working for GO.

MONKEY: Jillian will make a list of what trainings we have done.

MONKEY: Gail will add the "value of training" discussion to agenda queue for
another 20-30 minute discussion. its not about the 2009 budget.

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3. Budget

We had no requests to change our proposed budget at the last community
meeting. (We have had a request to bring forward a training discussion.) So
we don't need to resubmit a new budget to the budget cmtee.


4. Quorum

Gail pulled up the quorum document we use now. "Quorum is reached when a
simple majority, 1/2 plus 1, of households are present at a meeting. Once
quorum is reached it is in effect for the remainder of the meeting, even if
household leave. July 23, 2001."

So if our issue is getting to quorum we don't want to make it more
households than 1/2 plus 1, for sure, the question is if we want to make it
less. The community could say 1/3 if they wanted to. The community should
talk about "household" - if we have 2 couples in a household, is that one
household? And for example, Mel is an owner but renting from Sarah, and Eric
and Tammy are in two different units, what is one household? Also could
acknowledge that some households never come to meetings. And as we get more
renters they may or may not have the same commitment to meetings as owners
- its hard to know. Some will and some won't (as with owners). It seems
like so far, those who rent whole units are very committed to participating.
Folks who rent a room have gone either way.

Its demoralizing to struggle to meet quorum - have we set the bar too high,
maybe time to change the bar. We could have a different quorum for a final
budget decision if people want to.

To bring this to the community, we could just bring discussion points and
listen to what people say. Don't want to start with a proposal.

Next step would be to make a list of factors, or issues at play that we've
identified, and bring those to a meeting to hear people's thoughts about it.
Also would be interesting to count for the last few years, how many
households came. Sarah did attendance figures for a few years up to 2005.

MONKEY: Gail will count attendance at meetings 2005-2008.

Is quorum in the bylaws?
MONKEY: Jillian will check if quorum is in the bylaws.

MONKEY: Gail will put a quorum discussion in the queue, start with a 20
minute discussion, reflections on how quorum is working for GO.

5. Training

Idea that came out of the last budget discussion (and was a reminder from
the 2008 budget discussion) iis to have a GO discussion about training and
its value, how much do people value it and of what kind of training.

What kind of prep for a meeting discussion would we need to do? We should go
back to training sessions we have had, to remind people and ourselves of
what we have done. Laird events were not training for the community, they
were outside facilitation essentially.

Off the top of my head, this is what I recall:

We've had Diana Kardia for two training events.
We had Sandra Greenstone for a consensus training (and she did outside
facilitation)
Elph and Jillian did a facilitation training and a consensus training
Beatrice Briggs did a consensus training
Shari Leach did a training too
2 hour training about children, with outside presenter whose name I don't
remember, from Living well with children cmtee
and of course a half dozen GOers spent two years taking Laird's facilitation
training

MONKEY: Jillian will make a list of what trainings we have done.

MONKEY: Gail will add the "value of training" discussion to agenda queue for
another 20-30 minute discussion. its not about the 2009 budget.


6. Check in with grounds about their landscape plan weekend event?

No attendance tonite from Grounds. It was Nov 1-2 that was the preferred
meeting dates, as per the community meeting a month or so ago. But that's
too close now probably. Other ideas, there was the 2nd runner up weekend of
11/15-11/16 (although there were some that could not make it that could make
11/1-2, and, we have a community meeting on 11/17), or reschedule it for
early to mid December, or even early January 2009 if they can get approval
to spend the 2008 money by a certain date in Jan. 2009. And it is totally up
to grounds.


7. Next meeting
2nd Tuesday in November is 11/11/2008, 7pm, CH sitting room if its
available.

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