Hi everyone
I
apologise to Donald, Miriam, Marianne and anyone else, if I offended
them. This was never my intention and I sincerely appreciate the huge
efforts of the garden group. My question was one of process, especially
in light of the document we just accepted into the membership agreement about
how working groups present proposals.
I
have had a brief conversation with Donald and Miriam and a longer one
with Min. I believe the underlying problem is one of different working
groups following different processes of consultation with the rest of
the community.
Paraphrasing
Min (and please correct me if I get this wrong Min) "The garden working
group have talked at great length about how to organize the garden and
what to grow and issued invitations to the community members to attend
meetings to discuss these ideas or to talk to individual garden group
members about the garden and give suggestions. It was assumed by the
garden group that if community members did not attend these garden group
meetings then they were not interested."
Other working groups have come to the general meetings and presented
ideas, options and proposals. Questions are asked, sometimes the
community doesn't agree with what a group is suggesting. This happened
to my working group, the kitchen group. We were worried that we would be
short of funds in the final budget and we suggested at a meeting that
we ask the Toiroa community for loans and gifts. The meeting rejected
this idea (and the meeting was right, we ended up with the full budget).
The kitchen group went away and got on with the job. The conciliation
group had a working document sent back twice by the meeting, they
persevered and last night it was passed. The signage group has had
their ideas sent back twice and... (watch this space).
The
newly accepted Meeting Guidelines includes a section entitled 'Proposals
from Work Groups', which outlines this latter method as the way working
groups should present their work to the community.
Personally, I am very interested in how the gardens are laid out, in
what is
being grown for eating or for beauty and all the rest. I appreciate the
invitation to the garden group meetings, but since we moved in I have my own
working group meetings to attend and the resulting work to do, working bees, decorating, work, busy life etc etc.
I
have been expecting to see a proposal from the garden group given
to the general meeting, talking about options and ideas that we would
discuss and agree on.
Proposals of how the vege beds would be used, what is happening with the lawn, where the tiled
outside area with shady trees and the pizza oven might be etc, etc.
My question stemmed from my expectation that this would be the process followed. I believe that, like myself, other community members have very little idea what the garden group is thinking and planning, and we would very much like to know.
Sincerely
Jeffrey