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Hello all, would appreciate your thoughts on a member of the EC (not a position holder) who does take on a lot of the EC work which is much appreciated. However, he does seem to be a law unto himself, hiring tradesmen and getting work done on common property without discussion with EC; getting strata to issue notices to comply without discussion with EC; contacting letting agents about resident behaviour without discussion. You get the picture. My concerns are twofold: one I don’t always agree with his decision making; two – how valid are the notices etc if the correct procedures have not been followed?
Thanks in advance
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This is one of those areas where you can see somone is operating well outside their rights or responsibilities but you have to wonder if there’s any harm being done. If the self-appointed strata cop is issuing notices to comply off his own bat, they have no vlidity – but that doesn’t mean they won’t get the appropriate reaction and nip a problem in the bud.
If he (or she) is getting tradespeople to fix up Common Property and it goes wrong, then they could be liable for damaging common property because it is unauthorised work.
I would try to legitimise some of their activity by allowing them to go ahead and do what they are doing regards work, but only up to a certain value and to issue warning notices (not NTCs) for a limited number of infractions with a copy to the EC whenever they do so.
In both cases, there actions are not ‘permitted’ but – provided they aren’t victimising people or wasting money – you really don’t want to rein in someone who’s doing work that others shirk. Just read all the postings on this website about strata schemes where nothing gets done and you’ll see what I mean.
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While it’s good to see someone keen to get things done, being a law unto himself is going to eventually cause issues for you.
In addition to what Jimmy has mentioned I would get him to at least tell everyone in the EC what he intends to do prior to doing it. This could easily be done via email to the group as an ‘FYI’ type scenario: that way if you disagree, you can reign him in on certain matters.