A meeting with Mark: first reflections on the vision document and planning stage one

The Reef
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Today @Lee and I met Mark Van Den Dries, for the first time in his official capacity as our coach. The agenda consisted of:

  1. His feedback on the vision (1.0) document.
  2. Some questions we had been unable to answer in the course of writing that document.

Here is what we learned.

The vision document is way too detailed

In Mark’s opinion, we should prepare a much shorter, simpler version of the document. It’s good that we thought about it in such detail, but in his experience it is way overkill for a first meeting (and for the website). We should therefore prepare a shorter version, leaving a lot of the details to the following discussion. For example, it’s OK to say “we would like to have a good endowment of common spaces, because sharing is how you generate a good quality of life for relatively cheap”, but we should avoid being too specific (the 900 m2 garden, and the laundry room, and the living room with professional kitchen…). I think I can take the lead on that.

We should hedge our promises

Mark called us out on a couple of things in that document. We want to be green – good! But we are not going to be building with straw, because that implies very thick walls that eat up too many square meters. Also, if we want acoustic insulation (good!) our walls need a lot of mass but not volume, so we are probably looking at concrete, etc. And we need to keep an eye on price, etc. We want to be inclusive, but our contemplated price range is not that inclusive. “Inclusive” means something else. We should be up front that this is mostly going to be a middle-class project.

We will still try to uphold our values, but we are aware they are in trade-offs with each other, and constrained in various ways.

ASBL and Société de Droit Commun

This was a direct question: which legal vehicles do we need to buy the site? By which process?

It works like this. The ASBL represents its members in signing the option to purchase a site. An option works like this: the future buyer pays the seller 10% of the agreed-upon price. In return for this, the seller will not sell the site to anyone else for 12-18 months. If the buyer changes his mind, he loses the advance. If the seller changes his mind, he needs to indemnify the buyer.

After an option is signed, the Reeflings move to set up a société de droit commun (maatschaap in Dutch) that will conclude the actual purchase on their behalf. This is the point where all Reeflings need to secure all of the finance for their units, and put it into accounts that can only be used to pay for the remaining 90% of the site’s price, and for The Reef’s construction. A notary is needed to lock down this finance.

People can leave the ASBL at any time, but once this step is taken they no longer can leave the SDC. Their only way out of The Reef is to sell the unit, once the building is complete.

What to put in the statute

The ASBL’s statute should contain a description of the ASBL’s goal, and of its governance mechanisms. We already know that it is possible, in Belgium, to put this information in an attachment. In that case, the statute proper will say, at article 1, “the goal of The Reef ASBL is to realize the project in Annex 1”. Mark thinks Annex 1 can be in any language, not just in French. However, he thinks The Reef as a project, in the statute or any attachment to then statute, should be described in much less detailed terms than we have so far.

The governance mechanisms should be spelled out clearly, but he, again, sees them as more streamlined than we do:

  1. The distinction between consent and consensus ceases to be relevant if you allow for abstention. If I abstain, it’s like I’m saying “I can live with it”, which means it’s not consensus but consent.
  2. If consent cannot be reached, he proposes moving to (qualified) majority voting in the same meeting. The important part is that people need to know in advance that, in case a consensus (or consent) cannot be reached, we will vote. This, again, needs to be in the statute.

Next steps after the public meeting

  1. Recruit at least 70% of the future Reeflings (100% is not necessary)
  2. Write “Le programme” (what we call Blueprint 2).
  3. Buy the terrain, and proceed to recruit participants for the remaning units.

In step 3 you also look for commercial/social partners (in their case, the ASBL who feeds the needy). This is done when you already know your site, where it is, what types of space you can fit in it, etc.

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Thanks for this account @alberto. Good to have had this reality check from Mark - his comments make sense to me.
I was confused at first because you wrote that he looked at the ‘vision’ document, but I understood then that he looked at the ‘blueprint’ document.
I’m in favour of engaging Mark, but I was surprised to read that it was the first meeting in his ‘official capacity as our coach’. His engagement must then have been a decision of you and Lie alone.

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Indeed, though for now his engagement is limited to preparing the public meeting. We do not yet know if we will continue after that!

We (Lie and myself) felt we could not prepare a public meeting without asking the questions explainined in the post, and that we need (in the meeting itself) someone who can field questions from the audience, when they fall out of our range of expertise.

If the group that emerges from the public meeting, agrees that this was a wise decision, everyone is happy. If not, the responsibility of making a bad call lies with Lie and myself. In that case, we are ready to cover Mark’s fees for this phase out of our own money (as well as the other expenses leading to the meeting), and the group that emerges will make different choices.

We do this willingly, as we believe that this meeting will be a good investment to reduce uncertainty around an important decision, whatever we decide.

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Thanks a lot Alberto. If you allow me, I’d like to add some nuance to a couple of points:

I’m afraid it’s a little more nuanced than this. If you find a benevolent seller, then the option period can take very long, but the normal way of doing this is paying 10% to the seller at the signature of the “compromis” (which is like an accepted bid). If the sale can’t go through for reasons that are not foreseen in the compromis, the 10% can be kept by the seller as an indemnation.

The first point I believe is incorrect. There is a difference between consent and consensus, albeit small. It’s somewhat explained in the Governance document, but needs further work. The way I understand it is is that in consent-based decision-making you can object only based on the interests of the community. This means that it is theoretically possible for a proposal to be adopted with the consent of only a few people and the rest not necessarily agreeing but willing to let it go. In consensus-based decision-making on the other hand you’re seeking some sort of agreement. It can happen that a couple of people abstain, but they shouldn’t be too many.

For the second point it’s important to add that he said that only during the building phase you need an immediate plan B for when circle-based decision-making gets stuck. Otherwise I believe it’s still important to do the entire dance of the person who blocks coming up with an alternative proposal etc etc.

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I though that was what I wrote. This:

Is the same as this:

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And then for the sake of completeness and keeping track, a couple of additional notes:

How Mark works:

  • He keeps track of the hours he works in an Excel sheet, which will be saved on The Reef’s common drive. He will then send an invoice to the asbl every 2-3 months.
  • He would like to get access to The Reef’s common drive

A recommendation for note-keeping of meetings:

  • Stick to operational conclusions only.
  • He showed an example (in Excel format - I was worried Alberto would faint :upside_down_face:) which had the following headings: person responsible / presenter, subject, short description, follow up actions.
  • It’s important that the decision that has been taken is very clear.

Some recommendations for the brochure:

  • Be sufficiently clear about what we mean by “ecological” when it comes to the building, so as to avoid possible conflicts with environmental radicalists.
  • Make it clear that there are other considerations for the building too, such as price and accoustics.

Recommendation for The Reef’s website:

Recommendations about membership

  • Make a “parcours” (i.e. what we have in mind, a gradual process of moving in)
  • Let the GA decide (e.g. by 75% majority vote) about whether Associate Members can become Full Members (and don’t hesitate to follow your gut feeling and refuse people)

What to do after the public meeting to get to know new Reeflings?

  • Proposal to go an visit Ilot De Spiegel in Laken. He recommends this one because of its “ilot” character (you can see it in the picture in the link).
  • Don’t recruit too many people. Around 70% of the total amount of units would be good until the purchase of the site.
  • Get some Teams started.
  • Do some fun or educational activities

What should be in “le programme” (Blueprint 2.0)?

  • What is private and what is common
  • The total number of square meters (garden and built) - for the 30% of the units for which there are no people yet we can make an estimation of how big they would like their private units to be.
  • For every unit: budget and square meters
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Yes, I agree. It’s more the 12-18 months I’m not sure about.

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In other words, he recommends concision over completeness. The minutes of a meeting will consists only of the decisions that were made.