Hello Alex and all
On a personal level I agree absolutely with what Alex is saying, but the proposals is outside the scope or authority of what I’m doing.
Would somebody like to put on the agenda for Thursday that from now "we do not put anything on the main agenda that hasn't first come through a sub/ workgroup”?
In the meantime there is a problem – I have had a lot of suggested new work groups but a paucity of raised hands. I am about to collate suggestions and offers that have come in and send it out again as a ‘prompt’.
Gay
Gay Buckingham +64 27 4544012
On 18/01/2021, at 4:38 PM, Alex King via Ucol-shareholders ucol-shareholders@list.king.net.nz wrote:
As well as the areas you mentioned, I would like to see a group finalizing our documentation and administration needed for settlement.
I also think that to make the best use of our time, everything that comes to our main meeting should already be in the form of proposal from a work group. I believe this is the practice at Earthsong, they say "The purpose of the Focus (work) Groups is to research and collate information, discuss issues and formulate proposals to the Full Group, and to carry out tasks once agreement has been reached."
I am very frustrated that sometimes decisions are made at our full group meetings on scant information and often with little understanding of the work required to implement those decisions, and without considering who will take responsibility for carrying them out. And when we fail to deal with all the matters we need to get through, the suggestion that is often made is to add more of the ineffective full group meetings, which will just waste more time when we can least afford it...
There is a better way, we have already forshadowed in our Cohousing Membership Agreement that we will have workgroups. So I propose that in future we not put anything on the main agenda that hasn't first come through a sub/workgroup.
Regarding documentation and administration, we already have a lot of this work underway (e.g. Body Corporate rules - Min, Cohousing Membership Agreement - Warren, Mortgages - Maria, Insurance - Anne, liaison with Lawyer ??, liason with surveryor ?? liason with DCC ?? etc.) but it would be good to have a more formal group. The group would help with consistency between efforts and also have an overview to make sure nothing gets dropped or forgotten.
Some of these things are being done by the directors, but our capacity is limited, plus directors specifically deal with UCOL matters, and many of these things are wider than UCOL, plus the directors will disband once the company winds up.
In the draft Cohousing Membership Agreement we have the Finance and Administration workgroup. (Earthsong have a group called "Admin Body Corp" https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B83z3bYhMF_VOVhuZTRPNExYWlk/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B83z3bYhMF_VOVhuZTRPNExYWlk/view).
I suggest we start our Admin workgroup, I am happy to be on that with a few others. I also suggest maybe the people on the legal liaison team might consider it? And this group can be the group that brings documents (and legal and financial issues?) to the group.