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Steering Committee Revised Mandate
Steering 2005-06-01
Summary:
To replace the original mandate.Proposal:
1. Type of Committee:Steering is a Standing committee
2. Empowerment and Empowerment Procedure:
Steering is empowered, as per the Master Deed, to make decisions for the full group in time-urgent situations. When a time urgent decision comes up, a minimum of three steering members participating will be considered the quorum necessary to make a decision. In addition, effort will be made by steering to include as many Great Oakers as possible, to apprise the community of the situation and enable input and participation in the decision, when a time-urgent decision needs to be made between community meetings. Whenever Steering makes a decision for the community, Steering will communicate to the full group what they have decided, over email and at the next community meeting.
Steering is also the decision making body for the Community Improvements Fund in the GO budget. When a request is made to Steering to spend some of the Emergency Fund, Steering will ask to be provided all the background information about the situation, discuss the issue, and make a decision. A minimum of three steering members participating will be considered the quorum necessary to make a decision. Steering will announce the decision on email and at the next community meeting. If a member or a committee wants to "appeal" that decision they can ask the full community to consider the matter at the next community meeting, if time allows.
3. Mandate: Steering's overarching mission in service to the community:
- To serve the group by holding the big picture of what is happening at Great Oak
- To discuss issues currently "up" in the community that affect the community, whether at the individual, committee, or community level
- To encourage work to be done on issues steering feels are important to be resolved, by delegating issues to the appropriate Standing, Sub, or Ad-Hoc committee
- To serve as liaison with CDC and other outside parties where needed.
- To serve as a contact point and discussion forum for GOers, or others, who want to talk about an issue or have a question/proposal for Great Oak that does not clearly fall within a committee
- To make time-urgent decisions between full-community meetings
- To be the decision making group for the GO Community Improvements Fund
- To make sure that an annual calendar is created each year, showing dates for community events, including: community meetings, committee meetings, community work days, community training days, and approximate dates when annual planning processes should start, such as the annual budget process.
4. Committee Make-up and Term lengths:
- Steering is comprised of one representative from each Standing committee (currently, Finance&Legal, Grounds, Membership, Common House, Process, Meals, Buildings, and Work.).
- Each committee is responsible for choosing their own Steering representative.
- Each Steering rep will ideally only serve on Steering for approximately 8 months, at which point their committee will choose a new Steering rep. Steering will work to ensure that rotation of members off of steering is staggered, to avoid a situation where too many people rotate off at once. In order to achieve this, some terms may be longer or shorter.
5. Committee Email List and Meetings:
- Steering has an email group, steering@gocoho.org
- The Steering email group is open to "listeners" of Great Oak community members.
- The Steering cmtee will meet ideally twice a month. (Currently 5-6:15pm on the first and third Sundays of each month.)
- Steering meetings and agendas are announced ahead of time (recognizing that in many cases steering may not know much about its agenda ahead of time).
- All Great Oak community members are welcome at steering meetings. Agenda items should by default be considered "open".
- Steering can declare an agenda item "closed" if they feel it is needed to have private discussion. Steering envisions that this might occur for items involving individual members' financial life, personal health, or interpersonal issues; or financial or legal negotiations on behalf of the community with outside parties.
- Steering cmtee operates by consensus. Steering has been small enough that it has generally self-facilitated in the past, but any member can request that someone step into the facilitator role or arrange for an outside facilitator ahead of time.
6. Role of the Convenor:
Steering has a convenor, who currently gets work credit for this position.
The steering convenor does the following:
- announces Steering meetings
- collects agenda items
- emails out all known agenda items to the community ahead of time, including items that are "closed" to non-steering members at the meeting
- makes sure that minutes are taken at meetings and that the minutes are distributed by the minute taker to the full community after editing
- makes sure that decisions made in lieu of the full community are communicated to the community
- does the steering committee reports at community meetings.
The Steering convenor is also by definition in our bylaws, the President of Great Oak Cohousing Association. This does NOT provide any extra decision making power for that person, it only means that their signature may be the requested one on official documents such as easements.
7. Reporting
- The Steering convenor is responsible for making sure that minutes are taken at Steering committee meetings.
- The minute taker will send the rough minutes to steering for approval/edits, and then will send the edited version to talk, as well as print out a copy for the bulletin board.
- The Steering convenor will give the Steering committee report at community meetings, unless they task someone else to do so.
- The Steering convenor will announce any decisions that steering has made, on email and at the next community meeting, unless they task someone else to do so.
8. Role of Steering Members:
-Steering members currently get work credit for being on Steering.
- Steering members are expected to come to Steering committee meetings on a regular basis. If a member can't attend Steering s/he should see if another member of their committee can attend in their stead.
- Steering members are expected to have email access, to be able to respond to steering discussion between Steering meetings.
- When an urgent issue does come up, Steering members may need to attend some extra, last-minute meetings.
- Steering members are expected to be regularly attending their respective committee meetings, so they know what is going on in their committee.
- Steering members need to be willing to bring tasks from Steering back to their committees when asked to do so.
- Steering members need to be willing to take their turn at taking minutes when asked.
- Knowing that your purpose in being on Steering is not as an advocate for your committee.
- That when you serve on steering, you keep the mindset that you are a servant of the group, working for the greater good of the whole, with an attitude of being helpful, open, unbiased, and of service.
9. What is Steering responsible for:
- Helping Great Oak run as smoothly, and as healthily, as possible.
- Being a catch-place for urgent issues that come up.
- Providing information or channels or a discussion forum to those who need them.
- Managing the Community Improvements Fund.
10. What isn't Steering responsible for:
- Steering is not a policy-creation committee.
- Steering is not responsible for resolving all issues that people bring to the committee. Steering can be a good discussion group and can offer ideas on how an issue could be worked on, what might be the best next steps, but is not the place for problems to just be "deposited" and expect to be resolved.
11. Where does Steering get its funding?
- Steering has no funding for its own activities.
Pros and Cons
Pros
o Helps ensure Great Oak is working on the tasks and decisions that are needed.
o Urgent questions that come in have a focus point and will not fall through the cracks
o Keeps a liaison with CDC
o A range of perspectives and info about what's going on across the community should be present in this group
Cons
o Steering is a focus point for perceived power
o Potential for a decision to be made that later the full-group disagrees with