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There is a problem for our very fractured 10-unit strata. In the past, all owners have demanded to be on the EC but only 4 are prepared to attend a meeting! This means that the only meeting we have had is the AGM and the one occasion where 25% of owners petitioned the EC to hold a General Meeting.
The General Meeting can make decisions on a reduced quorum basis (but this appears not to be valid for an EC meeting). My reading of the Unit Titles Management Act (in Canberra) is that our Strata (or Executive) Committee can’t do ANYTHING if quorum is not present at the meeting. See the relevant section of the UTMA below:
2.9 Quorum of executive committee
(1) Business may be transacted at a meeting of an executive committee only if a quorum is present at the relevant time.Is my reading of the UTMA correct? And does anyone have a suggestion for achieving a functioning EC?
At our next AGM we hope to only appoint EC members who are at least prepared to attend EC meetings. This is a very low bar and in the ACT there is no requirement for EC members to do any training.
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The obvious answer is to limit the number of members on the committee by taking a vote ay your AGM under the provisions of Section 39B of the UTMA.
39(b) if there are 4 or more members of the owners corporation—the members of the corporation must, at a general meeting, decide—
(i) by ordinary resolution to have 3 to 7 executive members; or
(ii) by special resolution to have 8 or more executive members.
That means if more than seven owners want to be on the committee then your owners corp would need to pass a special resolution and that would require not more than two owners or 25 per cent of the unit entitlement holdings to vote against it. I would them move that your committee be reduced to five and hold an election.
I would also propose asking the owners corporation to pass an instruction to the strata committee that they must name in the minutes any committee members who miss two or more consecutive strata committee meetings and then hold a general meeting to discuss their removal from the committee under the terms of Section 39(5).
I would warn the owners that failure to adopt a workable system for the strata committee could lead to the appointment of an Administrator who would take away a lot of their decision making powers and cost the scheme more both in terms of paying their fees and indirectly from the the administrator’s requirement to do everything according to the letter of the law.
By the way, this would also apply to schemes in NSW which now have the power to remove non-functioning committee members by a simple majority at a general meeting.
Finally, you posted this exact same question three times. I was very close to deleting it completely. How many times do I have to ask people not to post multiple times?
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