July General Meeting Agenda

Tuesday, July 29, 2025
7:00 p.m.

• NOTE CHANGE OF LOCATION: ATOLYE, 236 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215 
• Only Park Slope Food Coop members may attend. To enter the meeting, all members must present their membership card or phone with their member ID barcode at the entrance.
• Time in parentheses is a suggestion. The Chair has the discretion to modify the order of the agenda or adjust the time allocated to each item.

I. Meeting Warm-up and Chair Committee Introduction (7:00 – 7:15 p.m.)

II. Open Forum (7:15 – 7:30 p.m.)
The time is allotted for members to bring one item per person for up to one minute to the attention of the membership. Written items will be recognized first. Items can be submitted anonymously and read by the Chair.

III. General Coordinators Reports (7:30 – 7:50 p.m.)
The General Coordinators provide brief reports on Coop operations, including but not limited to finance, purchasing, logistics, and special projects.

IV. Member Committee Reports (7:50 – 8:00 p.m.)
Committees authorized by the GM can deliver a short report. This time won’t be used for discussion of an agenda item. Depending on the number of committees prepared to report, each committee will have up to 5 minutes to make a report. Committees must notify the Chair in advance of the meeting to help the Chair plan time allocations.

V.  AGENDA (8:00 – 9:30 p.m.)
Item 1: Agenda Committee Election (15 minutes)
Election: Adrien Lorenzo Weibgen will be presented for election to the Agenda Committee. Agenda Committee members serve two-year terms.

Item 2: Personnel Committee Election (15 minutes)
Election: Leslie Schultz will be presented for election to the Personnel Committee.

Item 3: Vote to Create the Plastic Reduction Committee (30 minutes)
Item Sponsor: Zoe Kaplan-Lewis
Proposal: To hold a membership vote on a new Coop action committee – the Plastic Reduction Committee – to work with and in support of Coop staff to reduce the Coop’s reliance on plastic, which has detrimental impacts on health, environment, and climate.

Item 4: A New Coop Meeting Format for True Democratic Participation (30 minutes)
Item Sponsor: Jason Weiner
Discussion: All members should be part of our democracy, not limited to a time and format that doesn’t allow full participation. Our model is inherently inequitable. Hybrid doesn’t fix that. It is time for all members to be heard.

If our goal, as a Coop, is to really allow everyone to have a voice and be part of our democracy, it’s time to make voting an integral part of our general membership.

It’s time to stop limiting it to a time that doesn’t allow all members to participate. It’s time to make all votes part of the full membership.

It’s time to create a system that honors the fundamental need for all members to participate, if we want to continue this type of governance.

It’s time to create a system that allows all members to hear the entire conversation and THEN if an item comes up for a vote, cast an informed vote.

It’s time to make the General Meeting a discussion-only format.

It’s time to make the ability to receive credit at the GM be like a grand jury duty (where it becomes your work responsibility for the entire year, so the same members build a greater understanding of these items, and the incentive of credit is not just about increasing participation).

After each discussion, the full membership would be able to access:

•  The full recording of the discussion is available if they want.
•  A detailed summary if they don’t.
•  A full pro and con list on any item (created by this grand member team).
•  Time for additional conversations and discourse through an online forum or the Gazette.
•  And perhaps, most importantly, an opportunity to hear in detail how the hourly-paid staff feel about any particular topic. Remember, this Coop belongs to ALL OF US, but it’s the staff’s livelihood and future that is affected by every decision that comes out of the meeting. True community-based governance centers those who are most impacted within the community.