Cousin's meeting minutes

Hi everyone,
Following are the minutes from the cousin's meeting we held this past summer. Please take a few minutes and review them. As I said before, we would appreciate everyone's input and ideas so feel free to comment. Below the posting is a spot to add a comment. Thanks to Rachel for compiling it!

**These are the notes as I remember them from our cousin’s meeting. No decisions were made...these are simply notes to start discussion among the family.

Notes from the Cousins’ meeting:

Consensus
· Grandpa’s vision of consensus
· Family relationships are most important

Expenses (hand out from Steve)
· Went over expense list vs. income list
· The funds that were received last year for the lodge still left us in a negative balance- the expenses exceeded the income
· Expenses are only going to increase in the future
· Currently Grandpa is doing all of the maintenance for The Place – will not be able to continue this
o How do we handle maintenance in the future?
· Rotating monthly family responsibility?
· Our parents (aunts and uncles) contribute every year
o Don’t think they should have to keep increasing contribution when many cousins are willing and able to contribute financially
· Time for cousin generation to decide what we want to have happen to the place
· Several of cousins voiced they would like to contribute financially to the expenses of The Place in order for it to be maintained and available for our generation
o Once expenses are paid for, the idea was discussed that perhaps we could have the option to make “improvements” with any remaining funds from cousin contribution (swing set?)
· Those that are using the lodge really need to make sure they are paying their nightly fees – immediately
· The cousins need to make sure if we are bringing people up to The Lodge that we make certain appropriate fees are paid

Questions for further discussion
o Should the nightly fee be increased?
o How much should it be per night?


Timeshare Idea
· Someone came to the meeting with the idea to create a timeshare for The Place/Lodge
· Cousins, who were interested, would pay an annual fee and would be allowed a certain number of nights to stay “free” (booking in advance on a first come, first served basis)
· There could be a tiered system that allows people to pay on anticipated usage
o Highest amount could be for unlimited use
o Could be similar to a punch pass
· Cousins who were not able or not interested would not participate and can pay the nightly fee per person when staying at The Lodge
· Some cousins indicated they would be interested in paying a yearly fee regardless of whether or not they would be using The Lodge during the upcoming year to contribute to expenses and assure maintenance

Questions for further discussion
o Who would collect dues?
o Who would do the scheduling for The Lodge? Toni?
o Other potential problems?




HMT
· Brief discussion of HMT
· Right now Steve is running
· Thinking ahead, what do we want for our generation?

Questions for future discussion
o Who will run when Aunts/Uncles are no longer able or willing?
o What would the time commitment be?
o Should it continue past the Aunts/Uncles?
o What are the benefits of continuing?
o What are the potential problems?
o How would we handle collection problems?
o What would this do to family relationships?
o What about each family eventually having their own HMT? (i.e., Mike Hawkes Mutual Trust Association)
o Could Steve help show interested families how to set up and run a trust?


Leaders
· Idea was discussed for this group to eventually be self sustaining – no additional burden on Aunts/Uncles
o Collecting $$
o Scheduling
o Maintenance
· Agreed we need to form a leadership group to keep discussion moving forward
· Leaders would be responsible for organizing meetings, communicating with cousins, communicating with Aunts/Uncles, understanding costs and issues associated with The Place
· Leaders will be in place for a couple of years
o How long should leaders be in place?
· Four leaders were nominated by fellow cousins
o Ben (maintenance)
o Rita (communication)
o Rachel (general)
o Adam (financial)

What Next?
· Cousins in attendance agreed to discuss topics with their siblings
· Meetings will take place annually at the family reunion
· Some cousins discussed sending Steve a donation for the lodge to help with expense while a future plan is being discussed
· Jesse Sorensen created a blog http://thehawkesplace.blogspot.com/ as a forum to continue group discussions and to keep in touch
· All cousins are encouraged to attend cousin’s meeting next year
· Use blog for communication/discussion among cousins (Rita)
· Generate work order list for The Place (Ben)/ HMT (Adam)… understanding of the actual scope of work; confirm Jane’s involvement going forward (Ben)
· Monthly calls among leaders… Sunday evenings – 1st sun Feb, 8:00 pm