Another key area to discuss and solidify in the early planning stages is Governance. How will decisions be made? Also we could include Ownership here and Corporate organization (ie non-profit, etc). Keith has written a fair bit in his discussion paper, linked here.
More to come… open participation!
On April 16, 2011, after reviewing different models for decision-making, Lanark Eco-Village members decided to use “Formal Consensus”, the model developed by C. T. Butler (http://www.consensus.net) as our primary model.
We decided also to use the colour card system to improve communication in the meetings. A quick guide to the colour cards is here: http://www.mosaic-commons.org/colorcards
We agreed also to be guided by the principles of Consultative decision-making. A good summary of these is here: http://www.planetbahai.org/cgi-bin/articles.pl?article=167
Here is another link on Formal Consensus, from the Intentional Communities Fellowship:
http://www.ic.org/pnp/ocac/
On Consultative Decision Making, I made reference to a Baha’i site. I should make it clear that Lanark Eco-Village is not affiliated with any religious group. Another reference which may be more appropriate for us (coming from our founder) is here:
http://www.superaje.com/~sustain5/working_together.html