The democratic principal of one person, one vote doesn’t always apply in strata – sometimes that’s good, often less so.
QUESTION: The chairman of our Executive Committee owns three apartments in our (small) building, and uses this to dominate all our decision making. For instance, the building seriously need some maintenance work but whenever we can get three of the five committee members to agree to raise levies for this, he says his three votes plus his mate’s outnumber ours and rejects the plans. Can he do this and what can we do to stop him?
ANSWER: Your chairman may have three votes at a general meeting of the whole Owners Corporation but he only has one vote at executive committee level. And, by the way, he doesn’t even have a casting vote in the event of a deadlock.
If push came to shove, he could use his votes to load up the executive committee with his cronies at your next AGM. But even now, based on his voting record, he runs a serious risk of being taken to the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal or even sued personally for obstructing the Owners Corporation in its legal duty to maintain the fabric of the building.
As for what you can do, perhaps the trick is to look at it from his point of view. Special levies are a pain for anyone and three times worse for someone who owns three apartments. Perhaps you should investigate getting an unsecured loan from a specialist strata loans company. This at least spreads the pain beyond the present owners to all those who benefit from the improvements.
While we’re on the subject of voting rights, at any tight vote at a full general meeting, you can call for a “poll” which means the Unit Entitlements – the figure on which your levies are based – are added up rather than just the number of lots. Thus, two large apartments could theoritically outvote three small ones, for instance.
Is that right and fair? Maybe. It’s intended to reflect the level of investment in the building. Of course, if they really wanted to do that, they’d give owner-occupiers an extra vote. There’s no investment quite like living in a building and helping to make it work from day to day.