The Co-op After Extensive Community Consultation

At the Co-op's AGM, Sep. 24 - an employee/member-owner asks to have the Nelson Commons issue included in the AGM proper - as opposed to leaving it until the Member Information Meeting (MIM) segment at the end.This is significant: Having various condo-concerns raised by member-owners (M-O) - and discussed/responded to in the AGM - is very different from listening to tailor-made info and possibly being able to respond and then to only that in the shorter MIM.
The switch is promptly denied by the Board President. While - no surprise, surprise! and no procedural difficulties - items on the agenda for the MIM are moved into the AGM. She also allows: a meeting addressing the redevelopment could be called for all members at some point - and immediately buries that hot potato under other stuff! Never to mention it again!
Helped along nicely with a persistently malfunctioning microphone and the air-con blasting hot until half-way through. The M-Os promptly go numb - with the Prez not once encouraging the few who do speak to speak-up.
This AGM couldn't have been planned any better! For Management/Board (M/B)! Phew! Close one!
Then - the anonymous person writing the now-on-line Board Blog: AGM & MIM Report about the meetings: at great lengths places items actually dealt with in the AGM as handled in the MIM!
Where am I? What 27 mill real-estate development? 
Just sayin'!

This after Common Ground reports under -
The Commons - The story of our time
Two local examples
Archive: May 2014
www.commonground.ca -
the condo-project initially is planned after extensive community consultation.
No, no, no - the community is never consulted, neither are M-Os: this project is cooked-up by the M/B behind very closed doors - since then moved forward totally lacking transparency, accountability!
Thus untrue!

Many M-Os understandably are concerned - feel disregarded as such, jerked-around, really! If democracy is to be found at this Co-op in this AGM in this MIM: it is political instead of social. Following the Harper's dictum: We're only doing what you elected us to do. Actually - simply following our own rules - we can do anything we want so there, M-Os!

More (or significantly less) Common Ground:

12.000 Members
The Co-op has no grasp on how many members are active, inactive, have moved away, died, lost interest, whatever - thus its claim to now having 12.000 members is a self-glorifying exaggeration. Not to forget: Nelson only has about 10.000 inhabitants.
Thus untrue!
74 of these 12.000 members and 20 non-members! attend this AGM.

Units Sold
...half of the Nelson Commons units have been sold, with construction slated for this summer, a model for co-ops and progressive commons housing initiatives.
The Co-op has not sold 27 units by April 2014, when this issue is prepared.
Thus untrue!

A Model for Co-ops
The condo-block is just that. It is not a model for co-ops (housing?): the only connection with this co-op is the condos being planned by 2 specifically created by it non-co-op-companies and its store-space downstairs to be rented from one-or-the-other. While totally without co-operative input from M-Os.
Thus untrue!

Progressive Housing
Progressive commons housing initiative is just so much gluten-free tree-hugging come-on: this is a generic for-profit condo-development! Neither particularly cheap nor particularly pleasing aesthetically! With nothing commons about it - the environment/location and Nelsonites' attitude - except for the name's cool-factor.
Thus untrue! 



On Uncommonly Shaky Ground
So much for the Kootenay Co-op in Common Ground - its motto:
Healthy People - Healthy Planet
It's all connected
Weeell - not so much to the reader/M-O - through facts and adequate research - before actually published as vainglorious Co-op bluster!

More AGM
And more disconnect from M-Os - they barely appearing in reports this and that presented. One exception: the announcement that this year M-Os will not receive the customary yearly rebate -  supposedly it wouldn't make sense financially. M-Os in the audience are not gentled into this, asked for their understanding: this is announced as just one more decision by the Board!

One of the directors - in charge of outreach and pleased with his motivational self - talks about how much more info is going out to M-Os this year than ever before.
What he fails to mention: none of the deluge of condo-info in various forms is hard, satisfyingly up-to-date-informative - it's all repetitious condo-soft-sell. This too may be called outreach: but behind automatic gluten-free tree-hugging fuzziness - deliberately obfuscating.
When he applauds the president-about-to-resign - I bet she's ready! - for her total wonderfulness - many M-Os/guests don't join-in.

Another director - according to the Star, Sep. 26 - claims in the MIM: There's little that management knows that the membership doesn't (sic). Nice try! Superficially this may be the case, what with endless financial reports handed-out and run ad nauseam for M-Os in the AGM - comfortingly-safely taking-up much time - but the membership still knows nothing about the period between just before the condo-decision made and this AGM's numbers-only presented - spanning over 2 years!

Common Purpose
What becomes clear in this meeting: they all work hard to make THEIR project happen, and with having to sharply focus their inexperienced collective energy - they create their own simplified exclusive reality - gestalt - with its own path and values. And within that operative give-up their commonality - the co-.


So - M-Os don't enter: no common ground!

The Condos?
What's (un)clear from this AGM: financing of the project seems fragmented, partly based on conjecture - this contingent on that. It reminds me of making a payment due on one credit-card with another with another.......