Cosmo said: One proposal raised at the AGM was to connect water and electricity to a unit. We would have to reimburse the unit ‘connected’ for usage but the strata would save the fixed costs associated with having common property water and electricity.
Apart from the fact that the above proposal would be extremely messy and be reliant upon the on-going agreement of the current and subsequent Proprietors of the Lot “connected”, the usual practice is for Water Utilities to maximise their revenue by charging those so-called “fixed costs” to the individual Proprietors of serviced Lots, and for the Owners Corporation (O/C) to be charged for the property’s water usage only.
Under this usual scenario, the O/C would recover its costs of water usage from its individual members (i.e. Proprietors) as a component of their levy contributions and as calculated from their respective units of entitlement, so unless a significant number of Lots are unoccupied or some are non-residential that’s a fairly equitable arrangement.
Personally I don’t think that the saving of those “fixed costs” could be justified by the O/C’s costs of the works involved, and furthermore whilst it can certainly recover costs (as income) I don’t think that a payment (an expense) by way of a permanent / regular reimbursement to an individual Proprietor is permissible under the Act.
Can you advise as a matter of interest, does your Water Utility itself currently read each of those supply meters that have been retrofitted to individual Lots and invoice each Proprietor individually for the recorded usage?