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Hello,
Anyone knows if the EC in NSW has any way to stop decisions made by a chairman elected by power of attorneys who decides by himself on any spendings and quotations, etc?
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The strata law changes currently going through parliament with see powers of attorney treated exactly the same as proxies – i.e. they will be limited to one PoA per 20 lots. Will that help?
Also, it doesn’t matter how many PoAs the chair has – they only have one vote on the committee (unless they take decisions to a general meeting).
Sounds like the sooner you can get rid of this despot, the better.
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Would you happen to know if the EC can remove the chairman and strata manager despite having less voices than the Chairman?
The committee can remove the chair from their office (but not the committee) with a simple majority vote at the committee. Remember, the chair may not use proxies or powers of attorney at the committee (although they may have cronies on the committee). It’s one committee member one vote.
Currently, you need a special resolution (75 per cent vote in favour) at a general meeting to remove a member from the committee but the upcoming law changes will reduce that to a simple majority. Also, the new regs will prevent a sacked committee member for returning to the committee for a year.
Again, under the new laws a committee can be re-elected at any general meeting and, as mentioned before, PoAs will be limited in the same way as proxies.
On that note, how many lots are in your block?
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By the way, you have continued this conversation in another thread which, as was pointed out, is not allowed in this forum. If you want to tap into the collective knowledge here, please follow the rules. If you want to ask your question about powers of attorney, then do so again here. Your posts in the other thread have been deleted.
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We have also suffered proxy farming but also the gathering of company nominees. Do you know if the new laws also include company nominees being limited. We have one person on the committee holding over twenty five company nominees. Thanks
Do you know if the new laws also include company nominees being limited.
Yes. The explanatory note that’s part of the Bill before Parliament says this:
Schedule 3[48] implements recommendation 51. The proposed amendment limits the number of
owners a company nominee or a person acting under a power of attorney may exercise voting
rights on behalf of in a similar way to how the voting rights of duly appointed proxies are limited.If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
So in my scheme, 61% is owned by one family under different company names or SMSFs where trustees of SMSFs are their various companies.
The ultimate beneficial owner is now old and frail (so their story goes) and his adult children have POA over all his finances.
Does this change assist me in the sense this family now have less voting power?
It doesn’t sound like it will make any difference in your circumstances since one owner of multiple lots gets a vote for each of those lots. In this case it sounds like the “original owner” is actually using trust funds to avoid having their voting power reduced to one-third because they still own more than 50 per cent of the lots. You might try running that argument under current law – if you have the time, patience and deep enough pockets.
A better idea might be to build a compelling case of serious mismanagement and then apply for the appointment of a statutory manager.
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