Hi Peter C,
What you have going is, strictly speaking, not what the Act requires but as you point out good decisions are being made, your grounds coordinator is in a good position to make the most of the small resources made available to her and your EC is ready to step in if things get off track.
You are 100% right that there is a lot more going on here in my SP. In our case the sub committee (subbie) now comes with its own Treasurer and the project in question, the Hall, still has the best part of $60-100k to be spent. You can be sure the subbie will be involved in overseeing some or all of those funds if they can.
Once the EC in this OC get away with something that they should not be doing then they just keep going and it escalates. My EC is happy to cross lines and just keep on going if that is what they want to do.
It is interesting that our Landcare group still goes to the EC for their money and approvals which involves less money and less controversy than the Hall subbie being let loose with OC money.
Regrettably good decisions and responsible, unbiased, actions are not common enough in our OC to overlook something like letting a subbie loose with OC money.
In your case i would have the EC note what is going on is a little removed from what the Act requires but i would also have the EC note it is a low risk matter. As you point out your EC would step in if poor decisions were made or budgets blown, that would not be the case here.
In 2009/10 the EC of our large strata plan allowed the best part of 25K to be spent on the Hall when it only had 16K in the budget for the type of work done, the work was general construction, the main beneficiary was the same person who will administer the $3K. It does not bode well.
I am glad you have a subbie of one who is responsible and dedicated enough to do some good work and that you also have an EC prepared to step in if anything funny starts going on. It sounds like your SP is in a good situation. The point of this string of posts is that subbies are advisory; if they cross the line into decision making and/or monetary management then the EC/OC needs to consider where the subbie is going because the sub-committee has crossed a line.