Licensing & Area Presidencies

Every NewVistas community governs itself. What connects them is not a headquarters but a licensor, which is NewVistas itself, acting through its legal entity, the NewVistas Institute, and, as communities multiply, a small number of self-renewing area presidencies. Neither stands above any community.

What NewVistas does — and only that

NewVistas’ authority over a community is licensing only: the license for each building, the organizational paperwork, and the operating system and software that every community uses, even when mature, under a perpetual license. It cannot direct, override, or govern a community. It governs only what it licenses — its published operating specifications, its certified-vendor list, its contractors, and the setting in place of area presidencies — and it can never withhold, delay, reprice, or condition a license, fee, certification, or service to obtain any governing outcome. A community that declines its counsel stays in good standing and fully licensed. Its instruments are persuasion, training, publication, and demonstrated result.

Each building is licensed individually, by application, giving the community’s Trust the right to build it and access to certified vendors who post their costs on the licensed system — which is what lets a Trust build without a down payment or raised capital. A first building is licensed on objective, published readiness criteria only: recognition as a nonprofit corporation, a seated founding council of twelve, and a secured founding land contract. NewVistas paces new starts by what it and its vendors can support, never by anyone’s judgment of whether a new community is called for.

Its two fees

NewVistas funds itself through two cost-recovery fees, never a commission, royalty, or claim on ownership or control: five per cent on every certified-vendor payment for a licensed building’s materials, and five per cent on rental revenue for use of the operating system and app. Total collections may not exceed its actual operating and research costs plus a bounded operating reserve; any excess forces fee reductions the following cycle.

How it operates

NewVistas never owns facilities, property, or physical assets, and has no payroll or employees. Every service is done by independent contractors, under yearly renewable contracts, in one of three streams — the operating system, the design specifications, and vendor certification — and no contractor holds office, votes, or has authority over any community.

Today it operates as a nonprofit foundation, to be restructured by the end of 2028. Its founding board — David R. Hall, Karen V. Hall, and Michael A. Hall — serve as unpaid volunteers, and the foundation owns no assets. Within ten years the board is replaced by an unpaid council of twelve: Trustee, Regulatory, and Operating presidencies of four, under the same terms, birthday release, and annual single-seat renewal as every other office. It is the only coordinating body of the whole system, and no second global body may ever be created.

Area presidencies

Growth runs in a fixed order: communities first; then, once fifty exist in a region, the Council of Fifty; and only then an area presidency, serving a region of about twenty-five million people. It is seated by qualification, narrowing, and public random draw, its members drawn from the Enterprise Owners of the communities it serves, serving full-time and unpaid. Once seated it renews itself one seat a year and can never be re-appointed, unseated, directed, or dissolved by anyone. It helps seat each new community’s founding council and transmits the startup sequence. No body stands above it, and the chain of establishment — NewVistas’ own presidency to area presidency to founding council to community — carries no chain of authority.

The NewVistas operating system carries super-intelligence agents that compare conditions, surface anomalies, and prepare material for deliberation — but they may never seat, authorize, certify, or decide. Every governing act carries the name of the human presidency or council responsible for it.

Constitution, §12.10–12.19.