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Topic
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Should the SC advise owners that a committee meeting is to be held and on what date, and should the minutes of the SC meeting be available to the owners? If so, whose responsibility is it to let owners know?
Owners were not told of a recent committee meeting and have not received any minutes.
At the meeting, the SC committee of 3 or 4 members (not sure they were all there) voted to spend in excess of $12,000 (Capital Works fund) to change the colours of the art deco building’s common property foyer, the doors, balustrades and stair carpets.
The work has already begun.
To avoid surprises (!) like this in the future what should the owners do?
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Replies
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The legislation is absolutely clear on this and it is spelled out here in Schedule 2 of the Act.
In brief summary, any committee meeting has to be notified to all owners three days before the meeting and that notification must contain an agenda of the meeting. The committee may only consider items that are on that agenda. The meeting must have at least half the committee members there (before “proxies” are considered) for decisions to be valid.
To prevent this happening again, you might write to the committee and tell them to stop all work immediately unless they want to be charged individually for the work done.
They should immediately convene a proper meeting under the terms set out in Schedule 2 of the Act to confirm they have the authority to proceed with the work.
In the meantime they should issue a full and unequivocal apology to all owners for not having followed the correct procedures and undertake not to ever do this again.
Now, there are two things that will probably happen when you do this.
1. They may, indeed, convene a meeting to retrospectively authorise the work.
2. You will be removed from their Christmas card list.
You might also warn them that if they don’t convene a proper meeting and do things properly, you might apply to NCAT to have them replaced by a compulsory appointment of a strata manager.
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@jessico32 said:
Thanks Jimmy,-
- Who should notify the owners of a SC. meeting – the committee itself or the strata management company?
That would be a function of the secretary of the committee. However, EC functions can and often are delegated to a managing agent. However, the buck stops with the committee.
Depending on the number of units, Strata committee (SC) agenda and minutes may only have to be placed on a notice board if this has been voted for at some point – even if most owners are investors who rarely if ever pass the board.
In NSW and presumably all jurisdictions the SC does and can not make decisions to alter common property (CP) which a change of colours certainly is. Thus any work paid for by the OC which involves alteration of CP has by definition involved misappropriation of funds and legal action could be taken by the OC against whoever authorized payment. Happily for most SC members this is likely to be one individual who falsely advised the Strata Mgr. (SM) that the OC had approved the payment.
I don’t know if its available but my first recommendation for any OC hiring a Strata Mgr. would be to have a clause in the contract that it is the SM’s responsibility to sight and record evidence that any decisions involving SM action were decided at a properly convened meeting of the relevant body; otherwise my guess is that SM’s defence would be that when a decision is presented by the Secretary it is presumed that somewhere/sometime a proper meeting was held.
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