This is a question I have been banging on about for years now. Any building that has visitor parking should have a by-law that defines what a visitor is for the purposes of the use of said parking. The by-law you would write would be based on the best use for the residents of your block – i.e. one-size-fits-all will not work here.
If a block has a number of elderly people in it, you might want to make the hours in which a visitor’s vehicle is parked quite generous. If you have a lot of younger people who invite their friends to come and stay for the weekend, taking up all the parking, then you would make it more restrictive.
However, in this case you clearly have Buckley’s chance of getting a reasonable by-law passed.
But it’s as plain as day that this owner is getting a commercial benefit from letting his workers use visitor parking free of charge (and at a notional cost to the other owners).
I would be off to Fair Trading seeking mediation as a precursor to having the decision overturned through orders from NCAT.
I would also tell the local council that the terms of their Development Approval have been breached as what they agreed would be visitor parking is now used for commercial purposes.
And I would put forward a reasonable definition of what constitutes visitor parking as a by-law for approval at your next AGM. I’d point out that if it’s rejected out of hand, they can expect another trip to the Tribunal.
This owner is having a lend and the fact that he has enough cronies on the committee to support his parking grab doesn’t make it right, morally or legally. He’s a parking thief – plain and simple – and any disruption to the sense of community in the scheme is down to him, not you.