Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
I need to register an enforceable by-law I think that allows some owners to park in front of their garages, and one not. He says this would be unfair. Is an enforceable by-law (well written with $ penalties) the way to go?
I think your proposed by-law would be seen as “harsh and discriminatory” which means it could get turned over at NCAT where you might find you were all ordered to park in your garages.
However, there is a standard by-law that says residents can’t park on common property without written approval of the strata committee.
So first of all make sure that by-law is in place. Then find an blocking space you can define as designated for chummy’s use, subject to approval. Then get everyone to apply for permission to park outside their garages except for chummy, who should ask for permission to park in the designated space.
If he doesn’t want to play ball, then you could breach him (and his son) for parking on common property without permission.
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.
Never fails – the very day I post something asking people not to use their email addreses as their “nicknames” someone goes and does it. That’s how you end up with a daft name like Footrot.
To answer the question, how about contacting the owner and politely asking them to stop over-watering their plants?
Failing that, complain to the Body Corporate about the water coming into your lot. If the planters are common property, it’s directly a body corporate matter. If they are lot property, the the BC can intervene becasue it’s happening on their property.
As for who pays, it should be the BC initiall, partly becasue only they have the right to enter lot property to investigate.
But if the problem is caused by the lot owner and they have refused to address or fix it, then they will be ultimately liable.
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.
As to evidence of approval given to a pet owner…I expect the Chair will issue a letter to that effect in due course. When or if the pet owner asks for it. And that letter will not be broadcast.
There are a lot of assumptions in theses posts. The simple fact is that many strata schemes, especially small ones, operate informally and when there is a misstep, it can usually be quickly remedied.
In this case, who has been harmed? And if that person isn’t prepared to complain through the proper and readily available channels, that’s their choice.
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.
Others in the complex have not complained because the dog’s immediate neighbours are tenants who have no idea of their rights and are shy of bothering their landlords;
You know this, how? They told you? They asked you what their rights were? Seems like a generalised assumption to me.
We were given forms to fill in with multiple questions and were informed that the SC has 14 days to render an opinion. No such hurdles were positioned when the tenant of an SC member moved a dog in.
So your dog application was minuted but the committee member’s wasn’t? And they didn’t have to fill in the same forms that you did? There seem to be a lot of assumptions being made here.
Did you ever submit a motiong requesting clarification to the committee? Maybe there’s been a change in SC policy sine you applied, following the Court of Appeal ruling.
In any case Section 156 and Section 158 of the Act, respectively deal with animals that have not been given permission under the terms of by-laws, or have been given permission but prove to be a nuisance.
But maybe the problem isn’t the dog, but the procedure and the people involved, and that is another matter entirely.
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.
There’s two parts to this question: are they allowed and should they be allowed?
The answer to the first part is to check your by-laws. If the by-laws don’t say they aren’t allowed, then they are.
Most balconies are common property so your strata scheme gets to say what it does and doesn’t allow on them – but it has to be enshrined in a by-law (and by-laws differ from scheme to scheme).
As to whether they should be on balconies, I personally don’t think any barbecues should be allowed on balconies and if they are, they should be strictly controlled.
They are both a fire risk and a potential smoke nuisance and I don’t think you’d get much resistance from owners who were propared to say yes to gas and electric barbies bit no to charcoal ones.
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.
The strata manager would be invited by the committee, acting as the owners corporation. The law (below) seems to suggest that the chairperson must chair the meeting if they are present.
However, the responsibilities of the chair, secretary and treasurer of the strata committee can be delegated from time to time to the strata manager, via their contract. That means that at any given time the AGM could have two chairs in attendance – the elected chair and the contracted chair, i.e. the strata manager.
Strata managers conducting general meetings is standard practice and its legitimacy is rarely challenged as the standard strata manager contract allows them to do so.
To answer your question about whether or not the majority of owners can challenge this, they could insist that the chairperson chairs the meeting, but if they didn’t want to and resigned (until the meeting was over) then it would fall to the strata manager anyway.
For your reference Section 12 of Schedule 1 of the Act says:
12 Chairing of meetings
(1) Chairperson to preside
The chairperson of the owners corporation is to preside at any meeting at which the chairperson is present.(2) Presiding member where chairperson absent
In the chairperson’s absence from a meeting, the persons present at that meeting and entitled to vote on motions submitted at that meeting (other than unfinancial owners) may elect one of their number to preside at that meeting and the person so elected is, while so presiding, taken to be the chairperson of the owners corporation.Section 13 of the Act spells out the duties that may be delegated to the strata manager, and these include conducting meetings.
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.
In view of one person using multiple usernames, which is a clear breach of our policy and rules, this correspondence is now closed and the user has been permanently banned from the website as this is the second time they have ignored warnings to cease and desist.
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.
Nice, JimmyT, Keymaster. Very constructive. There’s always the chance they’re in the right and the possibility you’re being hoodwinked by the likes of EnterSandman and smooth operator, ya know.
You don’t need to hoodwink anyone if you’re not using multiple usernames and email addresses. This correspondence is now closed.
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.
Maybe it isn’t deja vu! Knew I’d seen this problem elsewhere.
I take your point, only too well. We have been plagued by one or two obsessive users posting variations of the same complaints under a variety of names (which is a strict violation of our policy and can result in that user being banned from the website).
In the past, we could detect this by tracking their IP addresses, but, as I said, these people are obsessed and they find a variety of ways of using this website to harass and defame their neighbours, usually because they are too gutless to stand up at a public meeting and air their issues through the normal channels.
Or they know the other neighbours are sick of hearing it all. Or they are just plainly in the wrong, and they know it, but can’t let go of their sense of injustice.
Our problem is that we are here to give a voice to the voiceless members of strata communities, and we are reluctant to shut people down unless we have clear evidence that they have breached our rules, and even then they will get a warning first, just in case they weren’t aware.
Trust me, even fewer people read the rules of a web forum than read the by-laws of their building.
For the record, multi-posts under different names, or even the same post under the same name in different sub-forums, are clear breaches of our policies.
But then you get the nutters (sensitive Flatchatters, please send any objections to that term, in writing, in a self-addressed envelope). I reckon the classic profile is a retired male who may have been in a clerical job or management or sales, who thinks he is a bit smarter than the rest of us (in my case, this may well be true).
In their case, the smoking gun will be a wallet with a gold Opal card and multiple library cards. Thus they can scoot around the city – $2.80 for all-day travel on public transport – using different Forum user names on different libraries’ computers, plus maybe a smartphone or tablet, just to annoy their neighbours (and me).
Then there are VPNs, privacy protections which are intended to prevent our bank details from being hacked when we use our laptops in cafes, but also let my computer think your computer is based somewhere else entirely, other than your back bedroom.
Just this morning I switched off the VPN blocker – introduced to stymie the sneaks – because it was keeping out bona fide users who are heeding increasing and valid warnings about protecting their online identites.
So thanks, EnterSandman, for highlighting this issue.
These obsessives are undermining everything we try to do here, taking advantage of our policy of anonymity for their own pathetic ends and making life just a little bit less pleasant for all of us.
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.
I’m doing this off the top of my head, so forgive me if I miss something out or make a misstep. Unless you have 100 per cent approval from all owners, the process of selling under the strata renewal legislation is long and complicated.
First you have to hold a meeting at which you get majority approval to even explore the issue. At that meeting a committee is formed and they gather proposals and bids from potential developers (all of which could differ greatly). Some may offer discounted apartments in the new block, some may only want to add on to common property, some may just want to buy everyone out and flatten the site. They may all have different ideas of what the exisiting block or apartments are worth.
The committee then presents the options to the owners and then there is a cooling off period of about three months (I think).
If 75 per cent by unit entitlement still agree at the end of the cooling off period, you’ll then need letters of approval from 75 per cent of owners of individual lots.
You can then present the proposal to the Land and Environment Court for its approval. Even at this late stage, individual owners can object and, if their argument is compelling enough, they can scupper the whole process.
What you and your neighbours need to consider is a fairly simple question – will the money you get from the sale of your unit allow you to buy somewhere better in an area where you want to live and will that be worth all the hassle you’d face to get to that point.
One of the most successful renewal schemes in Sydney by-passed the legislation completely when four small blocks in Cronulla combined their resources to offer the developer a much bigger plot and as a result received something like three times the estimated value of their apartments.
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.
I did not know that pet matters need to be recorded in the minutes because to date in the strata I refer to, pet matters have not been recorded in minutes.
Anything that’s going to be discussed and voted on should be in the agenda, anything that IS discussed and voted on should be in the minutes. There is no such thing (or should be) as “any other business” at NSW strata meetings.
If the committee is discussing and voting on issues that are neither on the agenda nor in the minutes then their decisions have no standing, especially in terms of the by-laws.
All that said, there is nothing to stop committee members having informal discussions away from the meeting to decide what they are or aren’t going to discuss at the meeting.
That’s why I suggested proposing a motion.
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.
Questions: (1) What action can be taken against this committee member by members of the OC? (The dog is loud at times);
The strata committee as representatives of the owners corporation has an obligation to enforce by-laws
(2) Must a SC bring to the attention of the OC: (a) Poorly behaving members of the OC (eg those who ignore by-laws?) ;
No. They just have to enforce their by-laws. They don’t have to make a song and dance about it.
(b) Details of pet applications received or can the SC keep that to themseves? and
(c) Details of which applications were successful and which were not?
Pet applications should be discussed at committee and the result recorded in the minutes. Otherwise they should be in the records of the strata scheme and available to all owners.
Why don’t you submit a motion to the committee to either show that they have considered a pet application for that dog or ask them to commence actions against the tenant to require them to follow the by-laws?
I suspect you know the answers to these questions and I wonder why you are airing all these disputes with your committee – or one member of it – in these pages.
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.
This is clearly an issue between you and the other owner. If you think the law has been broken, take it to NCAT and have the other owner removed from the committee. But I think we have read everything you have to say about this, at great length, many times over. Please let us know when you have taken action and what was the result.
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.
Schedule 2 of the Act says this
“A person who has voted, or intends to vote, on a motion or at an election at a meeting by a permitted means other than a vote in person is taken to be present for the purposes of determining whether there is a quorum.”
So the law has made provision for a quorum in the case of people not being present, such as in electronic (Skype or Zoom) or paper meetings.
The Act also contains provisions for voting in writing:
Schedule 2 (9) (2) Voting in writing
A motion proposed to be put to a meeting is taken to have been validly passed even if the meeting was not held if–
(a) notice was given of the meeting in accordance with this Schedule, and
(b) a copy of the motion was given to each member of the strata committee, and
(c) the motion was approved in writing by a majority of the members of the committee (other than the tenant member).
Notice it says the “majority of members of the committee” therefore, for a motion to pass, you need a positive response from at least half of the committee members as defined by the number of people it was agreed should be on the committee at the last AGM (not just those in virtual attendance).
If people can’t be bothered to even vote in writing, there is a simple cure for this condition. Just write to them saying you appreciate their lives must be busy and inviting them to resign from the committee so that less pressured members of the community can be co-opted in their places.
That should stir things up.
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.
I fail to see how the membership of a reputable strata online service (and I know the one you’re referring to) is only of personal benefit to the secretary/treasurer, since it can only be of any use in their dealings with the committee and owners corporation. They don’t need to be sitting repeating chapter and verse everything they have heard or read on the website for it to be of benefit to the committee and community as a whole.
Regarding payment of expenses (in NSW), there is nothing I can find under strata law to prevent the OC paying legitimate expenses retrospectively, just as there is nothing to prevent them placing restrictions on these expenses.
If the committee member is a valued contributor to the workings of the committee, I can’t see why they should have to be out of pocket to fulfill their role.
On the other hand, the ATO does not permit expenses incurred in attending strata committee meetings as legitimate deductions. However, some would say that’s a good reason why expenses SHOULD be paid – since theywould be out of pocket otherwise.
The simple solution is to propose a motion to your next general meeting that expenses to committee members no longer be paid, and see how that flies.
By the way, in Queensland, body corporate law allows for a maximum expenses claim of $50 per meeting and $300 per year.
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.