Urban Soil / Tierra Urbana Board Meeting Notes October 3 2016
Facilitation Team: Dani and Joe
Members Present: Dani, Joe, Eric, Josh, Lois, Carol, Somer, Adonia, Leslie, Ellary, Yuki, Shaila
Staff Present: Sandy, John
Others Present: Adriana, William, Alex, Vera, Ross, Elya, Silvio, Samantha, Jocelyn
1. Agenda review and intros
2. Management Report
Sandy reports that they are beginning to look at capital projects. Some repairs may require temporary relocations. Making sure first floor windows can be kept secure, especially empty first floor units. Let managers know if fixtures need to be replaced.
3. Flag Greenlight Proposal (Ellary)
Proposal from Bienvenidos: FLAGs who enter membership process shall be exempt from the four-household cap.
Concerns: overly simplistic, ignores reasons for the cap, doing this exception for the current situation.
Suggest that we could try for a specific period, such as 6 months. Suggest some time limits, such as only full members, and only FLAGs who have lived here for a certain amount of time.
Have a sunset clause at 6 months.
Approved by Consensus: For full members who have lived at USTU for at least one year, FLAGs (who have lived here for six months) who enter the membership process shall not be included in the four-household cap. Policy sunsets after 6 months.
Josh stands aside, based on lack of agreement on why we have the cap.
4. Budget Priorities (Lara)
Interest in adjusting current year’s budget, based on recent property tax reduction. Several people expressed interest in attending a discussion outside the meeting.
Josh suggests that discussion should focus on next year’s budget. Lara suggests we readjust our current budget to address security. Lara concerned that past budgets have been bare bones, so it’s time to explore more community participation in the budget process.
Adonia expressed that we have room to expand financial literacy, to have a participatory budget process. Yuki suggests small group organize the process, with input from all.
Josh says that the amount of money “to play with” is only about $13,000. Suggests that we prioritize future year’s budget, not tweaking current year’s budget. Jimmy suggests it would be good to broaden the budget literacy among more community members.
Lara to explore moving forward outside the meeting.
Closed Session Items
5. Permitting policy (Leslie)
Leslie requests that board approve what work requires permitting, also what work the community pays for and what the member pays for. Lara and Somer volunteer to work on a draft of this for board approval.
6. Back Rents (Josh)
Late payers have arrangements.
7. Carrie’s Greenlight
Approved by Consensus: Carrie greenlight approved.
8. Greenlight scheduling process
Questions raised regarding order of current queue of greenlight-ready folks in process. Long discussion of multiple objective/subjective ways to decide how to schedule the five folks ready for greenlighting - straw poll testing showed support and opposition to each, with no clear consensus in the room. Josh and Dani to bring proposals to a future monday meeting.
9. Next 4s and evaluation - skipped as meeting ran 35 minutes over time.