At an AGM the owners can restrict the strata committee’s actions, such as limiting the amount they can spend without the approval of the owners at a general meeting, under section 36(3)(b) of the Strata Schemes Management Act. Namely, ” a decision on any matter or type of matter that the owners corporation has determined in general meeting is to be decided only by the owners corporation in general meeting. ”
So you can propose motions to be voted on at the general meeting, such as requiring any legal expenditure dealing with a by-law breach to be approved at a general meeting. But is the owners are apathetic, or angry at misbehavior, then they won’t attend, or may agree with the action.
Section 103 of the Act limits legal expenditure, in any case:
| Urgent legal action | Up to $15,000 | Committee alone |
| Non-urgent legal services | Up to $3,000 | Committee alone |
| Pre-action legal advice | No dollar cap | Committee alone |
| Recovery of unpaid levies | No dollar cap | Committee alone |
| Anything else above thresholds | Any amount | General meeting resolution required |
And no, additional funds, are not permitted, other than the Administration and Capital Works funds, although a portion of funds can be earmarked for a purpose, I assume, and if the funds are collected via a special levy, then the purpose described for the levy must be followed.
A better approach is to distract the committee from obsessing about owner’s annoying behaviour to focus on real issues. At the meeting, analyse the budget, and suggest that the money wasted on inane by-law prosecution should be spent on cleaning, or repairing the roof, or not collected at all. You can suggest that the amount in the budget spent on legal matters, last year, be halved, due to the lack of success, and that money put to another more concrete use.
But if by-laws are not being followed, and that is causing real problems, then those issues have to be addressed. But if the past legal approach is not achieving progress, try other approaches. For example, parking issues might be fixed by installing a boom gate, or bollards, or improving signage.