2007 Retreat Notes

LAEV 2007 Retreat Notes - Can also be found at 2007-12-01 Meeting

Facilitated by Tree Bressen
Participants: Lara, Lois, Somerset, Aurisha, Thiago, Randy, Ann, Dave, Federico, yuki, Andrea, Michelle, Kathy, Joe, Julio, Julio, Jesse, Jimmy, Emily, Dale, Ron (not everyone was there for the full day)

Day 1 Minutes

Session 1: Sat, Dec 1: 9:30 AM → 12:30 PM
Opening Games
Review of Ground rules
Review of Agenda
Various Questions about agenda: LAUSD? Membership?

Visioning

Review text of vision building blocks, values, from our agreements
Looked at other examples of visions

How to proceed

• Lara would like to hear input about her addition of `the good of all’
• seems to be agreement about using Lara and Joe’s model to move forward
• Thiago would like us to talk about addition of `low cost’ and to
  talk about diversity
• Are we talking about vision statement of vision statement? We seem
  to be talking about the role of ecovillage in the world, so we’ll
  focus on mission
• Federico brings up the discussion of LAEV referring to the IC or the
  two block neighborhood. Do we want to discuss this? How do we deal
  with this question.
• Lois brings up the distinction between the LAEV neighborhood and the
  LAEC-IC.
  • Do we want to use those distinctions?
  • Yuki points out that she thinks the questions is about
    nomenclature, not who we are visioning for.
• Do we want to include sustainability? How to use this concept w/o
  using the `sustainable’ buzzword?
• Dave suggests something about education and outreach
• Ann suggests something about our decision-making: Consensus, direct
  democracy, non-hierarchical.
• Harmful? Is this too negative word? Can we be affirming rather than
  negative.

Decision about Los Angeles Ecovillage wording:

-For the purposes of this mission statement, when we say the Los
Angeles Eco-Village (LAEV), we are referring to those people living in
the neighborhood who have chosen to be (and been approved of as)
members of the intentional community.

Discussion about for the good of all:

• do we include this?
• this is pretty radical
• implies social action
• Thiago is concerned about insularity and isolation. If we define
  ourselves this radically, we need to be aware that we need to make an
  effort reach out to those who are not that radical.
• There is consensus in the group that we want to include a statement
  about `for the good of all’

Phrase notes: `solidarity’

Discussion of Low Cost:

• Andrea likes the idea, but wants to use something involving minimal
  use of capital, minimum consumption. Phrase `low cost’ not so good. :-)
• Affordable, economically sustainable
• say something about how we use resources
• use Buckminster Fuller phrase: “Do more with less”
• summary: should use something talking about affordability or
  economic sustainability

Diversity

• lois shares original diversity goals
  • income, ethnic, gender, generational, household composition
• different spirituality, different diets
• sexual orientation
• skill set
• sounds like there is agreement that we want to include more of this
  in the explanation of `diverse’.

Sustainability

• Ann suggests that `sustainibility’ is included in `higher quality of
  life’ and `lower impact’
• Dave asks question about translations and ease of translation
• Thiago says this implies a question of who is audience
  • Tree answers, wearing consultant hat: “Broad”
• Federico likes the `higher quality of life’ and `lower impact’ language
• Summary: Agreement that we like the current language, and don’t
  necessarily need to use `buzzwords’

Phrase notes: restorative? Regenerative?

chaos? Experimenting? Creativity?

• seems to be agreement that there should be some use of this in our
  mission statement, but that we probably will use this more in the
  description than

outreach and education? Learning? Evolution?

• seems to be relatively strong support to add this to the actual
  wording of the mission statement

consensus, direct democracy, non-hierarchical?

• collectively cooperative?
• should included this somewhere, not clear where

misc notes

collectively cooperative
to do more with less
how we use resources
lower cost of living
frugal
lower environmental impact

making of committee for drafting/redrafting this mission statement

Federico, Thiago (convener), Lara

Session 2: Sat, Dec 1: 2:35 PM

Finding Ourselves on the Transition Roadmap

Membership Committee Progress Report

Interview Mode, by Ron and Ann

This is a summary, there is a list of accomplishments that has been
sent to the listserv.

• POG (Prospective Owners Group): developed action plan and
  stakeholder’s document, and draft of “transition times” newsletter.
  Drafted a statement of values.
• Bienvenidos Committee: among other things: developed new membership
  process, took less than a year, created “community green light”,
  capacity, revised bienvenidos committee policies and goals, guidelines
  for liaisons, orientations, drafted a brochure, started a listserv,
  made bienvenidos committee the first point of contact.

Things to do:
- finish orientation do a trial run

• finish membership criteria document
• finish brochure
• what does it mean to be a member without living here

Community Land Trust Report

Accomplishments:

• Deciding on the name (Beverly*Vermont Community Land Trust)
• Target area delimited (1 mile around)
• Mission Statement
• Articles of Incorporation Filed
• Bylaws Drafted
• Formally supported participation on LEED

Goals

• Outreach and recruitment
• Elections will be held at the first meeting in January 2008.
• To draft documentation for transition of CRSP properties
• Work on 1023 application

Final comments:
People are invited to join.
If someone wants to work on the 1023 application with lois pleas get
in touch with her.

Other accomplishments

• Bylaws Committee: there are some articles that will come back to
  the community for further deciding.
• Started a Food Coop
• Welded a lot of the front gate that is called “Multiple centers of
  initiative”
• Avocado Alley – taking down the chain link fence and barbed wire
• Expanded the number of trees
• Liberated Clothes line
• Oyster Mushrooms patches started outdoors
• Maybe Fridays
• Shared Streets in progress
• Celebrated the marriage of two eco-villagers
• Take a Book leave a book bookshelf in the lobby
• CRSP and Radical Change LA hosted the Urban Permaculture Course
• CERT training took place
• Lots of community movie watching
• Bike room
• Wiki took off
• Dave set up network
• 127 was finished
• A lot of members of community came together to help Julio heal
• got some chickens
• South garden expanded and made organic
• Federico got a door
• Lara got steps on her door
• Saturday Esfandiar’s Neighborhood outreach
• Celebrated parking day LA
• Eating a lot of food from the garden including volunteer plants
• Lots of new people came along
• Some people who didn’t feel connected to the community moved on

on a sadder note:

• commemorated the life of a community member that passed out (Diana)

Where are we, what do we need to do now

Brief presentation by Joe.

What to do now:

There is a committee structure in place:

Related to Limited Equity Housing Coop

• Membership
  • One task took over on this committee about bringing people in (the
    intentional community) it might be good to talk about separating them
    again.
• Finance
• Bylaws

Others

• CLT

• What to do next in general?
• Committee Accountability for committees (BIKERACKED ITEM!)
• Figure out what do we need to accomplish and then figure out the
  structure
• Something about timeline
• Increase our financial literacy – FINANCE COMMITTEE
  • what needs to get done next to move forward with the transition?
• Figure out language on bylaws and approve them – BYLAWS COMMITTEE
• Figure out how much money needs to be raised and from what sources
  • for buying - FINANCE
  • and for operating coop - FINANCE
• Consense on rights and responsibilities of stakeholders and figure
  who is in which category – MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE
• coop needs to interface with the CLT through the ground lease –
  FINANCE COMMITTEE
• form co-op (filing paperwork) - BYLAWS
• financial framework for the coop (equity structure) - FINANCE
• Clear diagram of categories and sequence of joining them –
  MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE

Proposal: to create a coop area on the bike rack wiki page and
facilitation teams are comiting to check bike rack in planning for the
agenda. THIS HAS BEEN CONSENSED BY THE COMMUNITY

Federico volunteers to create the section and add the items

Bylaws committee has been renamed “Governance Committee”

Committee Structure: there would be 3 core group members for each
committee
- responsibilities: scheduling meetings, get help if needed, report
back, a meeting can happen with just these 3 people.
- Post meetings in advance on the listserve and the white board on the
lobby (THIS HAS BEEN CONSENSED BY THE COMMUNITY)
- Post notes

BIKE RACK ITEM! Committee Protocol (about who attends, how things are
posted, how much power do they have, what is the appropriate
participation)

Committee Sign up

(! Implies willingness to be convener)

Membership
Federico
Yuki
Randy
Joe

Governance
Somer!
Ron
Ann
Angel

Finance
Lara
Dave!
Yuki
Thiago
Aurisha

Break - >
4:45pm

Transition Planning Options from CRSP board Memo overview

Document has been sent to the listserve.

Lois’s current management functions:
- collect rents
- pay vendors and utilities
- reconcile checking accounts
- taxes
- insurance
- basic bookkeeping
- annual reports to IRS
- franchise tax
- initial point of contact for prospective members

Some notes:

Lois is going to post copies of appraisals and inspection reports of
the buildings at the moment of purchase.

Questions:
- do all the options imply that the transferee has to be a 501c3?
At this point, yes.
- do we have to choose one of this options by may 31 first?
Lois: it is the intent.

Pros and cons of each option

Option 1. Pog plan deadline to board by 3/31/08. POG PROPOSAL
PROS:

• we get to define it
• potentially simpler
• easier to have other financing options
• by creating the plan ourselves we will have more clarity, we would
  have to get our sh” together
• CRSP might like it too
• more open to proposals

CONS:

• we would have to figure out a plan to be and then negotiate with crsp
• unpredictable climate for financing (“easy money is over”)
• having too many things and open ended, but It could take a long time
  and be overwhelming

Option 2. Lease to own between POG and CRSP. At $10.000 a month
,all to purchase until figuring out next step
PROS:

• could be done quickly and easily without having so many things together
• fastest way of doing an initial transition
• it would be a smooth transition from a renters perspective (the
  money just goes to a different pool)
• gives most autonomy right away
• uses CRSP as the coop bank

CONS:

• decreases the urgency of the ultimate transition – loose momentum of
  the ownership stage – we could get stuck there - (and amendment could
  be written)
• two difficult large negotiations
• the POG hasn’t decided how it operates, it’s and ad hoc body, so
  there is potential confusion
• the group accepting responsibility might not be up to it
• leaves CRSP involved for a longer amount of time

Option 3. Owner finance. Purchase financed by CRSP at $10.000 from
POG to CRSP. POG to create 501c3
PROS:

• we need to get our stuff together faster
• a clean break, full independence
• opportunity to create credit
• aim for this one, could use option 2 as a fallback

CONS:

• pressure. We got to do it.
• Creates a long term financial obligation
• Loose certain safety on the possibility of making mistakes
  (consequences of the learning curve) – risky
• takes a lot of work
• starts with establishing sale price early on

Option 4. Find another organization with aligned values to take on
the responsibility
PROS:

• We get to continue doing what we are doing. No additional
  responsibility.
• If it is a flexible enough organization might be good.
• it could be a back up plan
  CON:
• Hard to find an organization that would fulfill the conditions
• a middle man with a cost
• delays progress on where we ultimately want to go

We agree to drop out option four in terms of putting energy on it, it
still remains as a CRSP option.

Evaluation and Wrap Up

positive

• listed our accomplisments
• Bike ride
• good opening exercise (milling)
• blankets were nice
• we stuck to timing
• fireworks free
• good professional facilitation
• interview
• we know what the committees are doing
• good switching seats
• high level of participation and engagement
• good coffee and tea and
  • Change:
• felt a little rushed sometimes
• crazy acronyms
• more heat
• stack was confusing
• scribe could help
• 90 minute sessions feel long could add brakes in the middle

Day 2: Sunday, December 2, 2007

can also be found at 2007-12-02 Meeting

Participants: Ann, Angel, Heather, Joe, Somerset, Aurisha, Jimmy,
Kathy, Randy, Dave, Michelle, Andrea, Dale, Julio, Yuki (notes am),
Thiago (notes pm), Federico, Lara, Lois

Stakeholder Document

presented by Ann

All discussion is related to stakeholder document (spreadsheet) in
which share owners, intentional renters, intentional neighbors, and
long-term residents are accorded their respective rights to attend
meetings AND have blocking power regarding various types of decisions.

Questions, Comments, Discussion

• where do intentional eco-villagers who have stopped participating
  lay in the organization? Answer: to be determined. Will they be
  allowed to just opt out? Or be asked to leave? Will attendance be
  linked to decision-making power?
• what about people who just don’t comply and use laev-ic’s non-legal
  entity status to ignore decisions? -
• Clarification: The discussion is regarding blocking power, but all
  people are welcome at meetings. – added language to clarify
• Expulsion decision refers to both expulsion from coop and ic? Yes.
  Needs to be specified in document. There may be more discussion on this.
• X means blocking power for decision-making items only. Need to move
  “attend community meetings” down to “additional benefits” section.
• Clarification: X for blocking power only refers to when decisions are
  made by consensus. Discussion followed about whether there would be
  other forms of decision-making other than consensus (i.e. voting).
  Added language to clarify
• We can pass this in general and then figure out how it meshes with
  legal requirements.
• This document will help us as a guiding document as we create more
  detailed documents such as our by-laws etc.
• Might need some more clarification in this document to help people
  understand what we mean (i.e. describing examples)
• Suggestion: Add to the responsibilities section some language about
  staying informed about issues.
• Need clarification with terms referring to various entities (i.e.
  LAEV) in the document.
• Where does CLT come into play with regard to changes to the
  building/land decisions? In general, what is the relationship between
  this document and the CLT? Should we add the CLT as another category
  of membership? – this will be figured out with the ground lease.
• Clarification: This is a road map as we move forward. For example,
  this lays out rights and responsibilities for groups that don’t exist
  (share owners) so this doesn’t mean that everything gets implemented
  if we approve it today. It just mean this is how we plan to implement
  it once these entities are in place.
• Change “share payments” to “monthly housing costs”
• Who should have access to private parts of the wiki?
• Want more discussion about who should be included on the listserv.
  Proposal: remove the x for long-term residents and have a discussion
  at a future meeting about how we want to handle situations where
  long-term folks want to be.
• Do we need to set a date to review the document in the future? Not
  at this point.

CONSENSUS: The stakeholder piece with the revisions made today (Ann
updated document during meeting and will send out to wiki/listserv)
and without the listserv and wiki lines

Proposal for listserv access: All x, with the language reading
“eligible for access to the general listserv, and must abide by
policies pertaining to the listserv. [policies to be developed].
Discussion: concern about creating more work in wanting to send more
sensitive e-mails to active members. But this might not be the best
forum for sensitive communications. Perhaps in the future we could
create a more exclusive list in the future for more sensitive
communications. CONSENSUS.

Proposal: just first 3 x reading “Access to hidden pages on the wiki”
Discussion: doesn’t seem important to have this in this document.
CONSENSUS: leave off this document.

Tree reflection: Right to decision-making should be tied to taking
responsibility. For example rent: the amount of rent does affect
folks living in the building. But does not reflect the responsibility
for it. So Tree would have suggested linking decision-making power to
responsibility in the guiding principles.

Bike Rack Items from morning sessions:

• Opt out and/or asked to leave for folks who came in as IC member,
  but are not participation (whether or not living in CRSP-owned buildings)
• Link attendance to decision-making power (i.e. responsible for being
  informed)
• Membership in CLT, IC, Coop -→ need to create a diagram with
  stakeholders and these entities (i.e. how different memberships overlap)
• Consequences, legal standing, “club” accusation -→ How to hold
  people accountable to abide by policies if there are no legal
  requirement to do so. Need a definition of what it means to be a
  member in good standing and what are the consequences of
  noncompliance. Could do some research on how other communities handle
  this. Kathy & Dale (with support from Lois) can do some research on this.
• Short-term stay category? What are rights & responsibility apply to
  them?
• Create policy for listserv usage -→ formation of adhoc committee to
  discuss electronic access (Dave, Joe, federico, yuki)
• Expulsion decisions for IC and Coop -→ IC decisions could be made
  by all IC categories? Does expulsion from Coop/IC result in eviction
  from building?

Transition Options

Focus on options 2 & 3 from yesterday regarding transition discussion
(option 1 eliminated for lack of interest from group)

OPTION 2 - LEASE/OPTION FOR BIMINI TERRACE & BIMINI APARTMENTS AT
$10,000/MO → ALL TO PURCHASE

OPTION 3 - PURCHASE FINANCED BY CRSP AT $10,000 FROM POG TO CRSP; POG
TO CREATE A 501C3 NPO AS PURCHASER

• Understanding the options:

Similarities:
Monthly payment of less than or equal to10K/mo
Cover mgmt functions itself or hire out
CRSP would donate land to CLT
CRSP acts as a lender

Differences:
Option 2: incorporate to shield members from liability;
Easier to enact by deadline
More time to draw up purchase agreement

Option 3: POG incorporate as non-profit as requirement
Ground lease with CLT

Question:
Had the financial cmte considered any other options (besides 1
through 4)?
No.

Question to CRSP:
can CRSP lease to an org that is not 501c3 (consult real estate person)

CLT could initially have land and bldgs.

Discussion:
We should know of CRSP’s terms before deciding to look for other options.

Revolving loan fund is a possibility. Lois suggests thinking about
friends that can loan at least $5,000 collectively for each of us, for
example. Establishing a local currency, in the event of US monetary
collapse, would enable us to pay back loan.

Timeline on Excel document

Borrowing $ from CRA as part of being recognized as a housing co-op

Meeting schedule:
May need to alternate POG and Building Cmte mtgs in order to move POG
items forward. May fit into cmte accountability discussion.

Proposal: Alternate Bldg Cmte mtgs w/POG mtgs. APPROVED

Exercise for considering options/getting a sense of group process:
Kinetic mapping – people stand along a line representing a spectrum
of the two options. Report out each of the people then stated why they
stood where they stood. Another option would be to pair up people who
were at opposite extremes for discussion and then report.

BIKE RACK from afternoon sessions:

• We should make sure to get the committees discussed yesterday set
  meeting times and get general sense of direction
• POG invitation and payment
• PROPOSAL: Consistent team of people that plan all POG mtgs/agenda
  items for next 6 months