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[ccbaxter]

Every week a thoughtful friend of mine, who lives in a strata as I do, forwards an e-newsletter he receives from a law firm specializing in the strata living. It contains links to tweets, video lectures, lecture notes, a blog etc.

I have become more than a bit suspicious over time, that some of this law firms opinions expressed in a rather pompous fashion, may I say, are a bit self-serving.

Quite often they express the opinion that there should be ‘flexibility’ and less rules in strata, not more, and all of us living in strata will be all-the-better for it. This is not the experience in the strata where I live. We have had a bunch of inexperienced ‘kids’ with a laissez-faire attitude running our strata for three years now and things have gone downhill considerably in terms of lifestyle, the strata’s appearance and community relations.

The prevailing feeling is, nobody cares and it’s a free-for-all. Anything goes. The best example I can give which is apparent as any visitor approaches is, there’s crap in every foyer, the noticeboard’s a mess and the gardens look like crap.

I go for ‘Zero Tolerance’ or close to it. I think more ‘flexibility’ in enforcing rules will just create a lot more work for the lawyers, in the final analysis.

This week’s epistle, or blog, from the lawyer’s newsletter follows. Are you with me or agin me?

Heading: Flexibility in Strata Communities.

In enforcing community rules, reasonably a degree of flexibility is required. Every so often some officious looking strata chairperson will be interviewed on a current affairs show about his or her efforts to evict a fish. Typically there will have been a problem in the community about animals and upon checking the by-laws, it becomes clear all animals are banned. Someone works out a fish is an animal and knows that the fellow who voted against them at the last meeting and took an unpopular position on the animal issue is secretly harbouring a single goldfish in a bowl on his mantle piece. The ‘rules are the rules’ approach to the interpretation of by-laws is taken and support grows for the deportation of the fish. On a ‘matter of principle’ a breach notice is issued and before we know it the talk shows and the radio ‘shock jocks’ have made a story out of the fish, the apartment block and the crazy things that people do to each other when reasonable people sit by and fail to put the extremists back in their place. Every set of laws has some antiquated provisions and unintentional consequences if interpreted literally. A good test for when some flexibility is required is to imagine how the public will react to your side of the story when it goes to air.

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