Oh Daphne …… the more you dig the deeper the hole becomes!
Firstly, The (NSW) legislation the regulates the activities of people in the real estate industry is the Property Stock and Business Agent Act, and that stipulates that copies of “contracts” such as the Strata Management Agency Agreement that your Owners Corporation has with its Strata Manager have to provided to the Executive Committee (E/C) Secretary within 48 hours of being executed.
Similarly, if the Agreement is for longer than 12 months it’s usual for the charging and fee schedules (as a minimum) to be updated at the Plan’s Annual General Meeting, and again a copy of the updated document has to be provided to the Secretary.
Anyway, if the E/C Member/s with whom you’ve spoken don’t have a copy of the Agreement (or can’t find it) then your approach directly to the Strata Manager is correct, and no you shouldn’t have to pay for anything other than for photocopying.
I assume your Plan deals with an established Strata Management Business, so you may do better by writing to the Principal of that Business with a CC to your Strata Manager; sometimes the boss is unaware of grass-roots problems with individual Clients until they loose them.
PS – just read your other post about “chairing an AGM” and noted that your Plan doesn’t have a Secretary. That probably means that there’s no O/C representative noted on the Agreement either, thus giving your Strata Manager carte blanche under delegated authority. All the more reason for you to appraise the Principal with regard to your concerns at a pareto level.
Whale (1315hrs).