Your Group Will Organize This Meeting Every 9ish Months Overview Person or group submitting - purl Proposal History - Submission Date: - Vote date: - Vote result: Motivation In-person RC Spokescouncil meetings are designed to be the primary site of full-space discussion, information dissemination, and decision making. The small group of people organizing the spokescouncil meetings lack the capacity to continue to be its sole organizers, nor were they intended to be. As a result, Spokescouncil meetings proper have not been held since December, though there was a General Assembly in March, an informal Community Check-in in April, and weekly open admin committee meetings began in April. Proposal Summary The responsibility to plan and facilitate the monthly spokescouncil meeting will rotate between the working groups. For example, if there are 12 working groups, then your working group will be responsible for organizing the meeting once a year. The hope is to arrive at a sustainable way to distribute this organizing labor, grow the pool of individuals who have org-wide perspective on RC, and increase our collective ownership, agency, and strategic planning in the space. If there is not enough buy-in from working groups to distribute this organizing labor, then perhaps we should collectively decide to cease the Spokescouncil and seek other methods of organizing. Details Background info Ridgewood Commons formed in the fall of 2025 when Woodbine left the space at 585 Woodward Ave. Woodbine-- the previous stewards of the space-- had an opaque body of core organizers with closed membership that required an explicit invitation to join. The Spokescouncil model was designed to empower the wider community of space participants with a forum for collective decision making, and to advise and hold accountable the core organizing body. The structure was planned over the course of a year. An organizational split was never considered during this planning process. A week before the first scheduled Spokescouncil Meeting, the Woodbine Board of Directors forced a decision on the future of the space. The community chose to stay at 585 while Woodbine would pursue a new location. What was intended to be a provisional organizing body slowly taking on larger domains of responsibility through an iterative process of development and growth was now tasked with a myriad of financial, legal, logistical, and organizational responsibilities during an abrupt, chaotic, and contentious period of transition of stewardship. This is all to say that the folks most invested in refining this experimental process of self-governance became those with the least bandwidth to do that very work, given the new responsibilities and workloads presented by the transition. It's entirely possible that this model is not the appropriate one for the space, and it at least needs major refinement. But ending or changing the Spokescouncil should be a decision made by its participants. Groups this proposal will affect - all working groups Labor required - sending out announcements and reminders about the upcoming meeting - reviewing the previous meeting notes and commitments - preparing an agenda for the upcoming meeting - hosting the meeting (setting up / breaking down the room) - facilitating the meeting - making sure any proposals are archived on our wiki. Individual or group doing labor - all working groups Money Required none? Proposal Description There are 9 formally recognized working groups (pantry, gym, tutoring, spokes planning, dinner, tech collective, tues reading, writing workshop, yoga&meditation). Assuming the meetings continue once a month, and these groups all participate, this means that once every 9 months a group will assume the role of the Spokescouncil Planning Group. 2 weeks before the next scheduled meeting, the Planning Group will send out: - a reminder about the upcoming meeting to the Spokescouncil Announcements[1]     and WG Spokescouncil Chat[2] - a reminder that each group should select two people to serve as a participating delegate and a notetaker at the meeting - include links to any proposals that have been submitted that target that     meeting. - a collaboratively editable pad where groups can post items they’d like to see on the agenda for the next meeting The two week timeline is intended to give Working Groups enough time to arrive at internal consensus on each proposal ahead of the meeting. 1 week before the meeting the Planning Group will send out a proposed agenda for the upcoming meeting. [ INSERT TYPICAL AGENDA STRUCTURE HERE ] By the day of the meeting, the Planning Group will have found individuals to fill the following roles for the meeting: - Facilitator - Note Taker - Stack - Time-keeper Ahead of the meeting, the Planning Group will set up the room and prepare the projector for public display of the meeting agenda. After the meeting, the Planning Group will clean up and return the furniture to its original configuration [ where is that specified? ], remove reviewed proposals from the proposal board, add the meeting notes to the the meeting agenda page, and move reviewed proposals on the wiki into the archived section [ how? ] [1] password-protected link to Spokescouncil Announcements chat ? [2] password-protected link to WG Spokescouncil Chat ?