[HCoop-Discuss] Goals and policies

[Davor Ocelic]

> 
> 5. Most members have been prompt about payment and we are in decent 
> financial health.  This is aided by a number of members voluntarily 
> contributing more than a single share.  However there have been and 
> continue to be a few who remain behind in payments.  A particular 
> problem is people who default on paying and then leave, forcing the rest 
> of the membership to come up with the difference.
> 
> Our bylaws allow for us to require a deposit, yet we have never really 
> enforced this.  Our bylaws also allow the board to eject members for 
> three months nonpayment.  I propose a new mandatory policy of requiring 
> a refundable deposit of just over three months average costs to be made 
> (equivalently, keeping ones balance over that amount at all times).  
> Right now there is no deposit required and members are only emailed when 
> their balance is very low or actually negative.
> 
> This would enable the board to remove nonpaying members before their 
> debt exceeds their deposit, and prevent delinquent members from leaving 
> the co-op with bad debts at the expense of responsible members.  A three 
> month deposit would only be around $15.

Hi,

Instead of requiring a refundable deposit (and thus increasing
entry-barrier for new members, which would be $25 that way),
I would rather see a bit different change in the
bylaws. One which would allow us to close people's accounts as
soon as their balance is below 0.

I mean,
people are notified by email when their balance is below 10. We
also require everyone to keep it above that amount.
Assuming someone's pledge was set to 1, $10 would amount to 
roughly three months of membership.

So if a person ignores our low-balance messages for three months, 
and reaches 0 (or a few cents minus), we should have legal
right to close their account right away. Of course, we might take
one last attempt at contacting them before actually terminating the
account, but that would only be a courtesy on our side.

There would still be a possibility for such members to reach
negative balance, for example if they increased their pledge number,
but I don't think that affects anything: 

For example, if we terminated someone's account before they reached 0 balance,
they would be reimbursed for the remaining balance and would not participate
in the current month's billing cycle.  (So other members' costs would go up
a few cents). On the other hand, if we terminated someone's account *after*
they've reached zero (or even gone negative), the same thing would happen -
people's costs would go up by the same few cents, just not in the current
month but on the next billing cycle.

The non-paying member would be able to use HCoop literally for free,
in the amount of time between him reaching a zero balance (without 
intention of making another payment) and us closing his account.
But that interval would hopefully be short.

-doc