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I’ve heard on the grapevine that an owner in our strata of 42 lots in NSW wants to get himself elected the Executive Committee and has been networking and asking for proxies. Problem is, he has an illegal structure or two or three or four… well… let’s face facts… he has purloined an area of common property for himself.
There’s not the will amongst us to force him remove his ‘structures’. He’s a bit holier than thou about it all. The usual rules don’t seem to apply to him.
How can we keep him off the Executive Committee? I think he should he be confronted in the meeting in front of one and all with questions about his suitability for a role and asked to remove his ‘structures’.
What’s the right thing to do here please?
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Talk to your neighbours about your concerns.
Make it so that you are not the only one to be sticking your neck out at the AGM. See if there is willingness among other owners to not elect him to the EC. If you make a point of not voting for him, it would be good if you could explain at the AGM why, with regret, you cannot support him for the EC. If others are forewarned so they understand the point you are making, then they may also vote against.
Another option is to put a motion to the AGM that would direct the incoming EC to address examples of appropriation of common property and unapproved structures. It need not be personal if there are other examples.
I think you need to gird your loins for battle on this one and explain to your other owners what happens if illegal structures on common property are allowed on a nod and a wink.
In simple terms, if this person sells their property and it has unapproved changes to common property attached, responsibility for the repair and maintenance of those structures reverts to the Owners Corporation and that can be a bottomless pit into which you and your neighbours may end up throwing incalculable amounts of money. Or not. But why take the risk?
Strata law is absolutely clear on this and your neighbour should be told firmly by the current committee that it is time to formalise their land grab or remove the structures.
Formalising would mean passing a special resolution by-law under which they accepted on-going responsibility for the structures and paid the owners corp a reasonable fee for their purchase. Once that is done, the structures can only be removed when they agree to do so.
Until then, the could find themselves subject to NCAT orders to remove them.
All that aside, you have to get this all on the record as soon as possible because if this person sells before a formal arrangement is made, and it’s clear other owners knew about this, then you will find yourself in a whole other world of pain.
As Peter C suggests, get a motion on the agenda of the next EC meeting that all “informal” arrangements for personal use of common property be examined and formalised as a matter of urgency (for the above reasons). This person’s election to the committee may then be seen is a slightly more critical light.
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In my experience you could be making a rod for your own back if you deliberately and successfully exclude someone from the EC.
It may be best to have him on the committee but make sure he does not become an office bearer, he’ll feel included but won’t have any powers.
You could also restrict the number of members you choose to have on the EC. If there are too many candidates for the number of places a ballot would take place whereby he might not get enough votes in order to become an EC member.
Pamster makes a lot of sense but it depends very much on the type of person we are talking about.
I have seen strata committees brought to a standstill because one person is so certain that they are right that they will not allow any other views to be discussed, let alone agreed on.
This can range from refusal to move on to the next item, even after a vote has been taken, to physically and emotionally threatening rage, leading to the hiring of security guards and the early abandonment of the meetings.
It’s very easy to get someone elected on to committees – it’s very hard to get them off. That requires a special resolution at a general meeting at which someone would have to get up and explain why they no longer wanted this person on the committee. Good luck with that.
A code of conduct or standing orders adopted by by-law at your AGM would go some way to keeping recalcitrants under control – but I don’t know of a single strata scheme that has such a thing
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@JimmyT said:
…but it depends very much on the type of person we are talking about.I have seen strata committees brought to a standstill because one person is so certain that they are right that they will not allow any other views to be discussed, let alone agreed on.
This can range from refusal to move on to the next item, even after a vote has been taken, to physically and emotionally threatening rage…
Yep. I’ve seen that too. It took a huge effort to not be at standstill or completely off-track. The EC member was not physically threatening, and mostly genial in person, but by email a different person regularly asserting very strongly and, to some, at least at first, persuasively, that the actions of other EC members, me in particular, were at best improper and at worst illegal. It was very wearing!
We got bogged down on one matter for over a year because this EC member had an odd interpretation of a provision of the Act and refused to accept diverse sources of consistent advice.A code of conduct or standing orders adopted by by-law at your AGM would go some way to keeping recalcitrants under control – but I don’t know of a single strata scheme that has such a thing
Every scheme in the ACT has an EC code of conduct, whether we like it or not, because it is a feature of the ACT’s Unit Titles (Management) Act, but I don’t think it would have helped in this instance.
The trouble was that this EC member’s behaviour was, as another owner put it to me, “the worst kind of bullying; insidious and hard-to-pin-down as obviously aggressive.”
Every complaint about my negligence, and worse, looked superficially reasonable but was subtly misleading if you knew the details.
Sometimes it wasn’t subtle. On a few occasions he made confident categorical assertions about facts that could be checked. He was unequivocally wrong and had clearly not checked. There was no apology.
After a very stressful couple of years he resigned when a project he had opposed within the EC was overwhelmingly endorsed at a general meeting. It was a great relief to suddenly be able to have relaxed open honest collegiate EC discussion and debate again without having to worry about how this member would react and who might take him seriously.