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Thank you Jimmy and Tina for your inputs.
First, I’m not frustrated. I am calm, collected, and I know that the strata manager (SM) has made very bad mistakes.
I have just finished my Cert V in Strata Management so I am well aware of strata legislation.
There is one SC member (Mr Jhon Doe) that I’m helping on this case. But my qualifications are no substitute to your valuable experiences. This is why I’m sharing this case here.
John Doe was the first to raise the breach with the SM. The SM promised to send a formal letter to the offender. But soon after asked John to sign a premature contract extension. John ignored that email since it’s irrelevant to the thread and they still have about a year in the current contract.
It appears soon later, the SM found out that the offender was a Strata Committee member. So he claimed that he needed to seek a solicitor advice to deal with the breach (note this is a textbook breach under S111 of the SSMA 2015).
A week later, the SM emailed John saying that offender is a committee member (a known fact as the scheme is very small) and said again that he would send the “letter”.
The SM appears to lean towards the offender. So he chose the easiest way to deal with the breach under s110 as a “minor renovation”.
However, he had a problem. The predicted vote was a tie and approval would fail. So the SM needed numbers in the committee, so he created another version of the AGM minutes and added a friend/sympathising owner with the offender to the committee to get the majority that he needs.
Although, this was enough, the SM even claimed that the offender had the right to vote on his own AC unit installation.
Lately, the SM circulated a meeting notice asking the committee to vote. While the email only mentioned the retrospective approval of the AC, the notice included another motion “to accept minutes of a meeting”.
Most people would print the ballot page, tick numbered boxes without noticing the extra “motion”. In addition, there was no attached minutes to consider, and there was no known prior meeting.
Moreover, the notice was riddled with defects, including wrong offending lot number, description of the works as “minor to the kitchen” and no mention of external installation on a common property wall/façade although the attached photo to the notice showed otherwise.
Mr John, put the SM on notice about the errors in the meeting notice and asked him not to publish any minutes related to the defective notice.
However, the SM published the minutes, and they were shocking:
- The offender voted on their own AC approval
- The newly added member voted although the new AGM minutes are still disputed.
There is still no clarification on what that extra motion was for.
There are many issues in this case. What do you think, flatchatters.
Thank you very much in advance for your valuable advice.