Second October Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Date/Time – 10/25/16 from 6:30-9:30pm

Place – Green Man Coffee House, a.k.a. Howie & Linda’s Fig Cottage

Attendees

Celeste

Karen

Howie

Yvonne

Dale, facilitator/time keeper

Marjorie

Jim

Linda

Jennifer, secretary

Intros

  • Linda excited about name game, using Yvonne’s Chinese Menu method.
  • Celeste has made some changes to WP website, went to an interesting municipal thing, Smart City.
  • Marjorie doesn’t want to be house poor, makes no sense for each person to have a separate house.
  • Howie met a lady in redevelopment that was interested in cohousing, has written to her and another woman but hasn’t heard back yet; we need to interject ourselves into government meetings.
  • Karen – Boomers’ coop starting some LLCs; November 17th is an event about aging in place at the LBJ Library.
  • Yvonne went to Reclaimed Spaces, got some info for the library.

Previous Minutes

  • Modified the following: $10 a month for dues, January and July will be the months we increase membership fee by $50. The first increase will be July 1, 2017.

Zoning

  • Need to look at which zoning would be possible for us to build on, SF-5, 6, some multi family.
  • Need more information about how we are going to structure our community in terms of condo or HOA rules and structure.
  • Need to know more about the four-adults-living-together rule.

Action Item – Jennifer will type up a summary of her previously researched zoning info and give to Howie to post to the website. Others of us will start to look up county zoning in information gathering this evening.

Picking a Name

  • The ones people liked - Bohemi Tribe, Central Texas Cohousing, Hearth Garden Commons, ATX Commons, Life Song Village, Uncommon Commons, Bat City Cohousing, Third Coast Cohousing, Inhabitat Hamlet/Cohousing, Hearth Cohousing of Central Texas, Armadillo Acres/Cohousing, Diverse-City.
  • Whittled that list down to Bat City Cohousing, Austin Creative Cohousing, Third Coast
  • Discussed what we each liked about certain names.
  • We want it to be catchy, reaching out to many types of people, but some of these names are too edgy, some mean a lot to certain generations but not others, and some are too warm and fuzzy.
  • Looking at many other communities, the names are pretty generic. Oftentimes just city name and Cohousing.

Decision – It’s okay to put Austin in our name because we’re committed to being in the Greater Austin area even if we aren’t within the city limits.

Elevator Pitch

“What’s the usual response to Austin’s affordable housing shortage? Build more energy-wasting suburban sprawl and impersonal apartment blocks. But a small group of us thinks there is a better way. Cohousing is an on-purpose habitation featuring individually owned private homes with extensive shared facilities, especially a common house. People live well and happily in hundreds of existing cohousing communities all over the North America and Europe. Unlike most subdivisions, ours is planned, developed, and managed by the folks who will live there. A progressive bunch, we possess no particular ideology except a desire to be good neighbors to each other. We seek like-minded, creative folks to help make it happen here. Please join us at one of our meetings. You’ll get additional information and discover if cohousing is for you. Instead of going out for connection, imagine coming home to it.”

  • We haven’t talked about affordability much yet and it probably won’t be much cheaper, so using that as a hook doesn’t resonate with our mission.
  • Brainstorming:

◦Growth – increase socially

◦To what extent/in what way is your neighborhood satisfying to you?

◦Enrich, thriving

◦Living with the family you choose

◦Earth friendly, conscious people who care about each other and the earth

◦What if you could live in a village in the middle of this growing city?

◦But a group of us thinks there is a more satisfying way.

◦We’re wasting time and energy by all being alone.

◦Double entendre for the hook?

Action Item – Howie and Dale will make another iteration and bring to the next meeting. Everyone is encouraged to develop your own and bring.

Membership

  • Made the adjustments discussed in minutes section above.
  • We can do the questionnaire as a form on the website and thus get information electronically.

Action Items – Howie will edit for language and bring to next meeting.

Workshop time

  • We broke into groups and did some research.

Action Item – Keep working on your topic and then email your findings back to the group.

Next Meeting

  • Tuesday, November 8th from 6:30-8:45 at Terraras Library
  • Howie will prepare the agenda and facilitate. (Zane might want to in the future, but Jennifer didn’t want to volunteer him.)

Action Items summary

  • Jennifer

◦Will type up a summary of her previously researched zoning info and give to Howie to post to the website.

◦Share draft of committees and their work.

  • Howie

◦Will make another iteration of elevator pitch with Dale and bring to the next meeting.

◦Will edit the membership proposal.

  • Dale

◦Will make another iteration of elevator pitch with Howie and bring to the next meeting.

  • Everyone

◦Is encouraged to develop your own elevator pitch and bring to next meeting and

◦share the info that you discovered at the meeting.

Decisions

  • $10 a month is fine, January and July for changing membership amount by $50. The first increase will be July 1, 2017, membership fee to join, monthly dues.
  • Membership proposal has been adopted with edits for language forthcoming by Howie.
  • It’s okay to put Austin in our name because we’re committed to being in the Greater Austin area even if we aren’t within the city limits.

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