In NSW, you can’t vote on general meeting issues or in strata committee elections if you are not up to date with your levies by the start of the meeting. Also you can’t be nominated for election to the committee while unfinancial but, bizarrely, you can nominate other people for election (but not vote for them).
Also, committee members can’t vote in a strata committee meeting if they or the person who nominated them is unfinancial at the start of the meeting.
Clearly, the chair of the meeting is expected to ascertain, probably with the help of the strata manager or treasurer, who is and isn’t ‘financial’. The law says if you owe money on the date the meeting is announced and you haven’t cleared the debt by the start of the meeting you are unfinancial.
The question is unclear as to what the start of the meeting actually is. Is it the designated time for the meeting or when the meeting is called to order. Should the strata manager or treasurer accept cash before the start of the meeting? Sometimes the debts are just a few dollors from an accidental underpayment. Most schemes, for obvious reasons, won’t accept cheques.
I know one strata management firm that won’t accept any form of payment at the meeting. Their rule is if the money isn’t in the bank, literally, by the time the meeting starts, then the owner is unfinancial.
You could always challenge that later but you’d have to prove that your vote would have made a difference to the outcome of a decision before NCAT will even entertain a complaint.
OK, here are the relevant bits of the law.
Schedule 1 of the strata Act says this
Voting rights cannot be exercised if contributions not paid
A vote at a general meeting (other than a vote on a motion requiring a unanimous resolution) by an owner of a lot or a person with a priority vote in respect of the lot does not count if the owner of the lot was an unfinancial owner at the date notice of the meeting was given and did not pay the amounts owing before the meeting.
Section 32.2 of the NSW strata Act says this:
An owner of a lot in a strata scheme who was an unfinancial owner at the date notice was given of the meeting at which the election of a strata committee is to be held and who did not pay the amounts owing by the owner before the meeting is not eligible for appointment or election to the strata committee.
On the question of “who checks?” Schedule 1 says:
If requested to do so by a person present and entitled to vote at a meeting, the chairperson must, before submitting a motion to the meeting or the holding of the election of members of the strata committee, announce the names of the persons who are entitled to vote on that motion or at that election.
With regard to voting at committees, Schedule 2 of tha Act says this:
Voting rights cannot be exercised if contributions not paid
A member of the strata committee is not entitled to vote on any motion put or proposed to be put to the strata committee if the member was, or was nominated as a member by a member who was, an unfinancial owner of a lot in the strata scheme at the date notice of the meeting was given and the amounts owed by the unfinancial owner were not paid before the meeting.