Hey all,
Thanks to everyone who made it to the Danielson Grove Community meeting last night. In addition to electing board members (Jim and I handily won an uncontested election) and approving the dues increase of $32 a month starting July 1st, we had an interesting discussion of the community rules.
I'm still sorting out the discussion in my own mind, but a few things came clearly into focus for me last night. I apologize in advance for writing another long email, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one.
The most important thing is that rules exist to serve the community as a whole, but, by themselves, are not sufficient to get great results. It requires a little more effort from the members of the community to really make things work.
The rules themselves are vaguely written and there is a fair amount of gray at the boundary of each of them. There are no innocents among us. Every single one of us (who has lived here for more than a few days) has broken a rule at one time, maybe repeatedly, possibly over an extended period of time. And, all of us are sensitive to different things. What some of us find objectionable, others care not one bit about. It comes with the territory.
In many cases, these violations may have gone unnoticed, or at least have caused little or no inconvenience for anyone else. So, the question becomes, when a situation becomes a problem for one or more neighbors, what's the best way to deal with it?
If our goal is to promote community engagement, health, mutual consideration and respect, then we need to focus more on the impact of our behaviors and showing tolerance for the needs or habits of others, rather than dogged, strict compliance with the rules, which turns out to be infeasible.
I recognize this is just a starting principle and doesn't completely solve the problem. It does emphasize that the responsibility for living in the community falls to each of us, and not to the board. We don’t' pay anyone to manage Danielson Grove. Nobody is going to take care of us, besides us.
Given all this, here's the outline of how this all might work.
1. One of your DGOA residents does something that bothers you. It might be against the rules, but it might not be. Most likely, it's in a grey area.
2. Decide for yourself if it's worth bothering over.
3. If it is, approach the offender politely. Tell them how their behavior affects you. It's not necessary at this point to judge whether their behavior is allowed under the rules or justified. Sharing its impact on you is enough.
4. Spend some time trying to understand their other point of view. This is more important than making your point of view known. Don't argue or advocate. Put yourself in their shoes. Be patient. Listen. Just getting this far is likely to solve 80% of the issues we run into.
5. If it's still a problem, talk to a board member. We can provide perspective and context.
6. If appropriate, we may send out a broad reminder to everyone reminding them about any particular rulesthat they may have forgotten.
7. Still not solved? One of us can mediate a discussion between anyone involved. I would expect 99.7% of the issues to be resolved at this point.
8. There could be a few more steps, like formal, written notices in clearly troubling cases, followed by as yet undetermined enforcement. In the ten years we've been around, we've had two cases that required written action and in both cases, that was sufficient to resolve the issue.
One other surprising insight for me last night was that fairness, equality and majority rule may be less important than I thought. If just one person has a serious problem with something that's happening, that's enough to consider an issue, even if no rule is clearly being broken. And, conversely, just because someone complains to you about something doesn't automatically mean that you have to do anything different. They might just have to live with it. The conversation alone may solve the problem.
Still reading? Thanks - you're a trooper. One last thing. When I hear stories about all the disasters of living in other communities and associations, I realize how well we are doing. Thanks for making it what it is.
At your service,
Peter