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I live in a residential/commercial blocks of units. For some time now, people who work in the commercial units are parking in the visitors’ spots most days of the week and week after week. Is this legal?
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You don’t live in my building by any chance do you? 🙂
We’ve had this issue for years. The commercial lots (that make up less than 10% of the total lots) would fill the visitor carpark daily with staff cars. When the carpark was full, they’d just double park across the residents garages (and then abuse the residents for asking them to move).
Finally a good committee comes in and tries to get it under control, but then the commercial tenants feel they are “victims” and start a crusade against the committee. Committee takes the commercial lots to NCAT, the commercial lots decide to stop parking the day before the hearing and “promise” the tribunal that they’ll stop. No fine is given, the day after, the cars are back again.
The committee gives up (who has time for being abused, just as you’ve alluded to) so the shop owners get elected to the committee, and run around putting up signs in the visitor carpark to allocate spaces to themselves. Of course, the only way to deal with it is for owners to waste days of their time going through the NCAT process.
God help a committee member if they put their car in the carpark to unload groceries for 2 minutes…. the commercial lots are running out within about 2 seconds to snap iphone photos.
Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible for residential and commercial lots to work together when it comes to this sort of thing. The weak resolution process doesn’t help either. I don’t envy you, and I feel lucky that I am in a position to move out and settle into a freestanding property.
@N860CR said:
… Committee takes the commercial lots to NCAT, the commercial lots decide to stop parking the day before the hearing and “promise” the tribunal that they’ll stop. No fine is given, the day after, the cars are back again.The committee gives up …
Was the “promise” verbal and not recorded or was it recorded as a ‘consent order’? In the ACT equivalent, ACAT, if you go to the Tribunal and the parties come to some agreement and they make commitments to do or not do various things, those things are then recorded as ‘consent orders’. They are then legally binding, not just a promise that can be forgotten the next day. Having a Tribunal order enforced is another hoop to jump through but the courts do not look favourably on people who disregard Tribunal orders.
The tribunal just wrote in their ruling that one reason they elected not to impose a penalty was because the tenants in question had “stopped and said they would now comply with the by-law”.
The only avenue open to us was to start the process over again with another day at the tribunal (at our cost, of course)
@N860CR said:
The only avenue open to us was to start the process over again with another day at the tribunal (at our cost, of course)Or you tell the commercial owners that you will go to NCAT, forcing them to take down the signs. And you willl seek orders at NCAT to have them removed from the committee.
Trust me, NCAT Members will not look kindly on being led up the garden path like that. The commercial owners contempt for the process will come back to bit them on the bum.
But then, of course, you have to be prepared to do it.
It’s not easy but bullies depend on good people giving up This would be a prime example of when a strata consultant who could come in, spell out the law and lay out the consequences would be very useful.
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One method for dealing with illegal parking that I employed a while back to great effect was to have a Windscreen notice, but also to keep a record of the times I had placed a notice on each car (by plate no.) and making sure each new notice had a written record of all previous notice issuances. I had a space on the notice with space for 5 notice records (maybe generous I know, but I didn’t really want the hassle of escalating cases too often) with the implication that, after the 5th notice, the matter would be escalated to a Notice to Comply with the potential for fines. I very rarely had to give out more than two or three notices on any one car. It only took a little more effort than simply having a wad of Notices ready to deploy, but the implication that the offenders were being tracked was quite effective.