The Council of 50
A NewVistas community comprises around 100,000 participants, organized into 24 districts, which are formed by 4 villages. Each village is formed by 10 branches of 4 units each.
NewVistas communities are set up by area presidencies, who, with the indication that a community can be established in an area, select trustee board presidencies. Trustees then set up the first agency presidencies, with the Capital Bank Agency presidency being the first to be set up. For the first communities, there may be only one presidency that acts as a world presidency, area presidency, trustee presidency, and agency presidency.
The Capital Bank Agency is set up first. Establishing the Capital Bank before all other community agencies and structures is essential because it is needed to take investments by limited partners and provide loans that agencies will use to develop infrastructure in the physical plant, including apartment (village)and district multipurpose buildings.
While a community is expected to achieve self-sufficiency – manufacture what it needs, grow its own food, provide enough opportunities to participants, and function as a vibrant community, geographic, climatic, and political factors may conspire to prevent full self-sufficiency. In other instances, the operational and financial muscle needed to develop infrastructure may be too big for one community to go it alone.
The communities that form most closely to each other coalesce together for social and economic circumstances. They are formally organized into a NewVista, which is a grouping of 50 NewVistas communities.
The Council of 50 is established once more than 2 communities have successfully been set up close to each other, such that they can usefully cooperate. In this respect, if different communities are set up in diverse areas, such as some in Australia, and others in South America, they will not form a Council of 50 because there will be little to cooperate on. Instead, their collaboration will be achieved through area and world area presidencies.
A complete NewVista has 5 million people. Each community is surrounded by farmland, pastures, wilderness, and areas for raw material extraction. In a NewVista, different communities’ farmland and wilderness areas are next to each other, even though their physical campuses are wider apart, sometimes several miles. With the communities being geographically close to each other, there is a high exchange of trade and culture, as well as a need to collaborate on a number of infrastructural undertakings. This collaboration is facilitated by a NewVista Council of 50.
The Council of 50 is comprised of the Capital Bank agency presidencies in each of the 50 communities in NewVista. With each presidency being formed by 4 presidents, a council of 50 has 200 members. They meet to discuss and approve inter-community endeavors, and in their capacity as members of the council, advise their respective communities on inter-community collaboration.
Historical background
In the early LDS Church, Joseph Smith established a council in 1844, shortly before his death, to govern LDS saints’ civil matters. The council, though consisting of many senior members of the church, also included other people who were not members. It was a separate entity from the general church’s organizational structure.
The early church operated in a challenging political and social environment. For instance, the saints were on the receiving end of brutal persecution in many of the areas where they had established communities – in fact, Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob 4 months after establishing the council. Early church leadership led by Smith sought to engage more positively with political and local leadership in the areas they lived. The council of 50 would be an important tool in this.
LDS communities had been established in geographically diverse locations in the United States. There needed to be a mechanism through which these communities could collaborate on social matters, outside the formal administrative structures of the church, which would be provided by the Council of 50.
While early LDS communities were established in areas that already had inhabitants from other faiths, saints felt that there needed to be a civil system that, while complimenting exciting laws and regulations, would assist saints to live more harmoniously with fellow saints and to more fully live the word of the Lord. The council of 50 would set up the systems through which saints would resolve civil issues without the need to resort to legal suits.
Early leaders, notably Sidney Rigdon, taught that there should be no division between church and state, in effect advocating for a theocratic government. This was deeply unpopular in the country and led to many problems that the early Saints encountered.
The early church also needed to have a mechanism through which it could address its issues with the authorities, which had led to widespread persecution and expulsions. The Council of 50 would have helped in this. Purposefully, it included people who were not members of the LDS, as Joseph Smith taught that all people of all religions and denominations would form part of the Kingdom, though Jesus himself would be king.
Modern application
As indicated in the introduction, a NewVista will not be a contiguous arrangement of individual communities. In addition, the first communities may be set up in highly diverse geographical and political setups. For instance, a cluster of communities can be set up in China, under a mostly socialist political environment, while another is in Germany, which has entirely different cultural and political realities. Both communities still need to operate within the concept, with reasonable local adaptations. They also need to cooperate to boost overall prosperity and help in setting up additional communities. The council of 50 would come in handy in assisting them achieve this.
At the moment, and even deep into the future when NewVistas communities have been established, the NewVistas concept will still be novel in many ways. In the digital age, much information is created and passed along, much of it incorrect, with the potential to cause harm. New ideas such as NewVistas may be the subject of extraordinary scrutiny and lead to regulatory hostility, as well as resistance in areas where a community is due to be established.
The Council of 50 works with political leaders, opinion shapers, and other relevant people in society to ease the establishment and operation of NewVistas communities. This includes lobbying, educational exercises to familiarize people with NewVistas, and consistently stressing that NewVistas is not an alternative form of government, but a social-economic alternative to today’s business models.
Most importantly, The Council of 50 provides different communities the opportunity to collaborate. In due course, when communities are in ever-closer proximity to each other, physical infrastructure, resource extraction, and trade will need to be approached at a wider level than a community of 100,000 people. The council will be instrumental in bringing together different communities with different goals to focus on shared challenges and opportunities.
Roles of the council
The Capital Bank, whose presidencies form the Council of 50, is a crucial institution in the community’s economic system. The bank receives and invests limited partners’ investment in the community, including capitalizing all community agencies, including the other two bank agencies. It also assists agencies acquire loans so that they can acquire the assets and infrastructure needed to serve participants.
To finance assets acquisition, an agency takes out a loan from one of the three bank agencies. The bank requires a down payment of 20% for the loan. The agency obtains the downpayment from capital invested in the agency by the Capital Bank. The agency also needs some funds for initial operations, generally meaning that agencies will have 25% of the value of their assets as investment from the Capital Bank.
Due to this primary focus, a core role of the council is to help communities develop infrastructure that would be otherwise too costly to afford, or which has a very long payback period. For instance, a railroad may have a payback period of 30 years, since it is not primarily built to generate revenue but to ease trade. As a result, individual communities may shy away from developing the infrastructure since they will be under pressure from limited partners to pay a good return while dealing with low-earning assets. The council’s roles are:
- Develop inter-community transport infrastructure
- Facilitate resource extraction
- Facilitate contact and dialogue between NewVista and society
Develop inter-community transport infrastructure
Communities start out on 100 square miles of land. As productivity and more efficient use of land improves, the amount of land needed will gradually decrease, with a community eventually covering as little as 25 square miles, this being the land needed for the physical campus, industrial and intensive agricultural blocks, and farmland, but excluding pasture and wilderness.
A NewVista therefore covers a considerable expanse of land, with each community being separated from the next by a few miles. An individual community may not have the ability, or immediate motivation to connect to others. However, collectively, this motivation is necessary.
The Council of 50 harnesses individual communities’ efforts for physical connectivity, mobilizing the resources and spearheading the construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure, including freeways, railroads, and airports. Through the council, it is possible to have good access to all communities, without leaving any behind. This further fosters equality not only among limited partners but among communities too.
Participants extensively use air transport to get to external resorts, mining areas, and other communities. The council facilitates the construction of enough small airports, since the focus is on frequent flights on small aircraft, transporting 10 – 15 people at a time, instead of large airplanes that can carry hundreds of people.
The council also facilitates the construction and maintenance of other infrastructure needed for transport, including waterways, cables for cable cars, and speed rail.
Facilitate resource allocation
In each community, the Raw Materials and Transport Agency facilitates participants who carry out raw materials’ prospecting, helping them process the resulting claims, and licensing them or others to extract the resources. In many cases, the community intends to be fully self-sufficient in raw materials, but this is not always the case.
In a NewVista, however, it is likely that the 50 communities will achieve almost total self-sufficiency, if they combine forces. The council is instrumental in enabling this by fostering inter-community trade.
More importantly, however, the council understands the enormous financial and logistical muscle needed to carry out viable mining operations. In many instances, individual communities may struggle to set up the operations without tying up too much capital in the process and failing to meet obligations to participants. The council can mobilize the resources needed, with each community gaining either easier access to resources and in some cases, royalties if the resources are extracted using its licenses.
Other large infrastructural projects such as dams, are also facilitated by the agency.
Facilitate contact and dialogue between NewVista and society
The Council of 50 is responsible for ensuring that the NewVistas concept is well understood in society, so that, even if it does not result in people wanting to become participants, it secures communities’ existence and prosperity.
The council interacts with politicians, religious leaders, influential opinion shapers, and other relevant people who can potentially have a positive or negative impact on NewVistas’ proliferation.
Council leadership and meetings
Quarterly council conferences are held every quarter, during the week immediately after each community’s general quarterly conference, which happens on the last weekend (Saturday and Sunday) of a quarter. The Council of 50 conference runs for 4 days: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
No president or presidency in the Council of 50 has precedence over others in the operations of the council. However, each year, a presidency is chosen through a lottery to coordinate the council’s activities. A presidency can only be chosen once during its term of office.
Each president in the presidency that has been selected by lottery presides over one day of the conference. Married men’s president (A) presides on Tuesday, married women (B) on Wednesday, single women (C) on Thursday, and single men (D) on Friday.
Being agency presidencies, members of the council are mature limited partners who are no longer actively running businesses. They are therefore able to dedicate their full-time to the community, and in this case, NewVista affairs. To be better equipped, presidents may hire consultants to help them in making good decisions.
The presiding presidency is chosen in the 4th quarter’s conference while the previous Presidency is still in office so that the new presidency can shadow the outgoing presidency during that conference and take over responsibilities once the quarter is over. The incoming presidency then presides over the next four conferences in the next year.
The conferences commence with a short session to introduce the conference’s agenda, the selection of a new coordinating presidency if it is the last conference in a year, and sharing information on any changes in the composition and terms of reference of committees.
Conferences take place in the coordinating president’s community, in Building 8, which also has offices of that community’s Capital Bank Agency presidency.
Since the conference is held at the start of a new quarter, its focus is the upcoming quarter, therefore involving things like the presentation of audited expenditure, budget allocations, and planned projects.
Committees
Much of the Council of 50’s substantive business is transacted through committees. Committees are not permanent and are put in place to focus efforts and coordinate the completion of inter-community projects.
Committees’ establishment is facilitated by the president who is presiding over the council’s conferences and activities in a given year. Committees are established before the quarterly conference so that they are ready to go when the conference commences.
Committees are formed based on need. Their composition and size are determined by which communities are involved in that need. Committee membership differs based on the enormity of the task to be achieved, and time, among others. Committee membership consists of full presidencies. In many instances, projects will affect 3 – 5 communities, meaning that the relevant committees will have between 12 and 20 members.
Committees prepare their terms of reference with the guidance of the member whose turn it is to be chairperson. This is based on the community-wide system of rotating presiding by meeting, weekly, monthly, or in this case, quarterly. Another member is selected for clerking duties based on the same system. Apart from quarterly meetings, committees can also meet virtually as members decide, to expedite project progress, or simply to touch base.
A committee’s life depends on the project it is meant to handle. Many projects take many years to be completed. Even then, they need the continued support from every community involved. This ensures that capital-intensive projects, such as the construction of an airport, or a dam, continue or terminate based on the wishes of communities in a NewVista.
The council reserves the right to approve or decline projects, even when a majority of communities back them. This is due to factors such as an unfavorable cost-benefit analysis, and more importantly, fickle support, meaning that it has only just cleared the 50% support mark.
Even with the support of various communities, and the council’s approval, projects’ support is reviewed every quarter at the conference. This ensures continued, strong support. It also helps boost accountability, as the involved communities will carefully scrutinize expenditures and results since it is their money on the line. Some communities may do their analysis and establish that the project will provide them minimal benefit. They can consequently decide to withdraw their support.
During committee meetings, members discuss various issues and can reach decisions either unanimously or by voting. Decisions that committees reach are presented as short reports to the whole conference, which ratifies them.
The funds needed to finance projects are sourced from the communities that will benefit from the projects. The Council of 50 and committees do not have the authority to impose taxes to raise the funds. Instead, communities involved, after all the project details are completed, determine how much each community will need to raise. They sign agreements to commit their community to the project, having been satisfied that they can raise the funds required. They thereafter go back to their community and develop strategies to raise money, most likely by imposing a tax on the return that limited partners earn from their investment in the community.