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We have seen how unscrupulous strata committees have used Pre-Meeting voting to assist in getting their favoured motions approved with a minimum of explanation and opposition.

Ain’t this the truth… This whole concept of pre-meeting voting needs to be outlawed. Example – our holiday apartments have a Letting Manager who also happens to be the Caretaker and, by virtue of the fact that he owns an apartment in the complex, is also on the Strata Committee. When guests make a booking at the complex, he gets to decide which apartment they are provided and that apartment gets the revenue. So, when he wants something passed at a meeting (like extending his letting agreement), he simply organises that to be done via pre-meeting votes and then contacts all the owners to ‘suggest’ they vote in favour. You get the picture here. If they don’t vote in favour, think that there might just be a chance that their apartment might not get an appropriate share of the guest rentals? – damm right… So, the owners approach is – don’t poke the bear. In the old days he used proxies now it’s pre-meeting votes – same/same.

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Thanks newb – should be like this but this Strata Manager likes to keep things close to his chest.  He sends out the pre-meeting vote forms which the owners fill out and send back to him.  He then counts them in the meeting and declares the result and, in answer to a question as to whether we can be advised how owners voted, he responds – no.  By the way it was not a secret ballot.  Nothing electronic about it!  Maybe the response from Just Asking is a way out – depending on whether the Strata Manager agrees to provide access to the records.

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Thanks for the advice Jimmy – but – catch 22, I put that motion on the agenda and then the Strata Committee organise to have pre-meeting voting to defeat the motion!  The way I am seeing it, this whole concept is simply providing a power hungey Committee with too much control.

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On this subject, my issue is the reverse of this.  I would like to able to communicate with all the other owners but the EC simply refuse to allow me to do that.  My requests to have the Strata Manager pass on information to other owners is flatly refused by the EC.

I expect that some folks will simply say I need to turn up at the AGM to express my views but given that my strata is basically a holiday letting operation on the mid-north coast on NSW, the majority of owners are not local and therefore do not attend.  Besides that when there is an item on the agenda that I would like to express an opinion on, it would be nice to be able to get my views into the hands of owners prior to the meeting.

So what is the legal position of communicating with other owners.  The Strata Manager will not provide a list of contact addresses for owners citing privacy issues but then won’t pass anything on.  What are my options?

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Ummm – very cynical..  OK so I should have mentioned that our block is actually holiday rentals only so owner occupiers can all get back in their cages and settle down…

What this by-law is actually about is the owner who has the letting rights (and is also on the Strata Committee and has the Strata Manager in his pocket) attempting to prevent owners who choose to let their properties themselves from leaving his letting pool.  His solution to his reduction in income is to get the Strata Committee to introduce a set of draconian by-laws and conditions that he thinks will stop owners from exercising their rights to self-manage.  What he should focus on is to stop ripping owners off and do a better job of running his business!

Anyway, this particular rule he is proposing to introduce is a joke…. (AND the Strata Manager should know better)

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Your comments about how the details of the financial statements might be made available to owners is very useful but this appears to rely entirely on having a SM who agrees to comply with a request to do so.  The original query obviously stems from an owner with a non-agreeable SM and I am in the same boat – in fact my SM even refuses to respond to my request which is pretty rude (I would have raised this at our recent AGM but our SM elected to hold the meeting by way of pre-meeting voting only which is a great way to avoid having to answer any difficult questions).

So what we really need to know is whether the SM can be forced to provide this information.  If not, perhaps it may require a complaint to Dept Fair Trading?

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Thanks for the response.  In this day and age, having to go to the office of the Strata Manager to view the details of expenses seems a bit nonsensical (especially when the owner doesn’t live in the same town as the Strata Manager) – bit like putting a cheque in the mail.  Surely Strata Managers could provide these details electronically at basically zero cost so the concept of owners having to pay a fee is also nonsensical.

Sometimes I am not quite sure just who Strata Managers are working for – the owners?

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Hi all,

Having read all the responses, I don’t think that the original question ‘as I am an owner is the Managing Agent obligated to send me a complete breakdown of all of the expenses?’ has been answered.  I am in a similar situation where I have requested a copy of the detailed expense items in the Income & Expenditure Statement presented at the AGM but, as yet have received no reply from the Strata Manager.  We have no one on the Strata Committee appointed as a Treasurer so I assume that role falls on the Strata Manager.  So, am I entitled to receive that information?

Thanks,

[Court]

My reading of the Act is that a Building Manager can be elected to the Strata Committee if they are an owner.  The primary question in this case is not whether they ‘can be’ on the Committee but whether they ‘should be’ given the obvious conflict of interest (the Caretaking Agreement being a fully remunerated arrangement).  Also, given that the Committee for a 42 apartment complex was only comprised of 2 people (one of whom was the Caretaker), what exactly was the responsibility of the Strata Manager in allowing the billing practice to take place?

[Author]

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