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Since your AGM is coming up, this situation may resolve itself. There is a very clear process that must be followed at the AGM.
1. First the meeting decides how many members there will be on the EC. In NSW this can be a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 9.
2. The Chair then call for nominations for the number of seats agreed upon. If there are more nominations than seats, you hold an election, based on all those voting having a vote per vacant seat (think of a sheet with, say, 12 names on it but you can only tick the number of boxes corresponding to the number of seats available).
3. If there are fewer candidates than there are seats, the Chair could start the process again, this time suggesting the same number of seats as candidates. Otherwise it is incumbent on the EC to identify and co-opt new memebrs to fill the vacancies.
This is what would happen if you didn’t have an AGM coming up.
Here is what the Act says about vacancies on ECs:
When a vacancy occurs in the office of a member of an executive committee … the owners corporation must appoint a person eligible for election as a member to fill the vacancy. Any person so appointed holds office, subject to this clause, for the balance of his or her predecessor’s term of office.
Note, there is no time limit on this but, for instance, if the last AGM agreed to have five members on the EC and someone who was eligible nominated themselves or was nominated, the remaining members of the EC are pretty much obliged to bring them on board until the next AGM when all seats are vacated and you start again.
Failure to do that would be grounds for an action at the CTTT to have an order issued to the EC to fulfill their statutory duties.
By the way, if the current chair uses an excessive number of proxy votes to reduce the numbers on the EC then elect only their cronies, they should be warned that these days the CTTT takes this as a sign of a dysfunctional EC, especially when there is an action to replace the EC (and owners Corp) with a strata manager.
