Hey, Roo, is that ‘own goals’ or own-goals?
Obviously the electronic voting thing would require a change in legislation and, bear in mind that the section of Queensland strata law relating to secret ballots is bigger than the whole of Victoria’s strata law, that could be a whole other long, drawn-out issue.
I live in a building which has a website; typically hard-to-read – style over substance – and boring as bat shit. Recently EC members’ email addresses have been removed but due to the prevailing view that other people’s ideas are dissent and good ideas are treason, the battle over the tiles on my balcony are there to be read by the world and his blogger.
Now I can’t find the email addresses of the new people on the committee – candidates’ identities are also kept secret “to save the embarrassment of those who fail” – to pass on the facts of the situation rather than the EC’s resident bush lawyer’s opinions.
I suggested at the last AGM that the minutes on the website should be locked by a password but the EC members, building managers and strata manager’s email addresses should be accessible to owners. Now the EC and AGM minutes are available to all and sundry but the EC email addresses are secret.
Seriously, though, I can understand why EC members wouldn’t want their personal addresses to be on the web to be trawled by spammers, but it would take about five minutes to set up generic email addresses like jeff@the stratawebsite.com which could then forward filtered mail to their own addresses.
This is what passes for communication in an autocratic system.
For all its faults, this website would be a great place for little polls to be run – like, what should we do first, buy new gym equipment or paint the lift lobbies (again)? But, like so many buildings in this state, we don’t need people to express their opinions because father knows best.
As was said by a prominent member of our EC only recently, “there is such a thing as too much democracy …”