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As I said, by the sounds of it, it’s an informal vote or an opinion poll, if you like, so poll votes and quora probably have nothing to do with it.
But if the committee is going to offer four options, they should have devised a way so people understood what their votes meant.
If it’s just a straw poll to reduce the options to a binary choice, to be decided in a formal setting, then they should have spelled that out.
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This is an irregular occurrance and your committee should have devised a system for voting which they sent out with the options.
I would say they should ask everyone to number the options 1 to 4 , then apportion points in reverse order, a 1 = 4 points, etc, and the option with the most points wins.
But that’s just me. Go back to whoever issued the vote and ask for clarity. This is not covered by strata law.
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Well, beyond taking their temperatures as they check in, or spraying them with disinfectant, there’s not a lot you can do. I’m joking of course. What I should have said is that there’s not a lot you can do as long as you allow short-term lets.
I wonder what the DA of your block says regarding holiday lets. If it says your block is residential only, the best thing you can do is change your by-laws to enforce the terms of your DA, and put the holiday flats back into the residential pool.
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Kaindub said:
I think the writer has been issued with a breach notice. The breach notice must include dates and times of the offence.
A breach notice has no legal standing in NSW so I can’t how its contents can be prescribed. A Notice To Comply must contain dates and times, as well as details of the by-law allegedly breached. But that’s not what he got, so he could feel free to ignore it if he so desired, or tell them to stick it, if he preferred.
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You have many options:
You could ignore it, as it has no legal standing (it would have to be an official Notice To Comply to have any consequence).
You could write to the person who sent it to you, asking why you’ve been sent it, and why it wasn’t a Notice To Comply.
You could write a letter of complaint to your strata committee, asking for a correction and an apology.
It all depends how much ordure you want to stir.
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Fair Trading’s Who’s Responsible Memorandum clearly states that the intercom handset is common property, if the system is connected to more than one unit.
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I think the issue seems to be that the secretary appears to have been paid, through his company, for work done as secretary, which can only be done retrospectively via a motion at the AGM.
The conflict of interest in hiring someone who might be the best person for the job but who also happens to be secretary should have been addressed at a strata committee meeting and minuted in the interests of transparency.
I have a feeling this looks a lot dodgier than it may actually be.
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The strata manager can legally charge you just over $30 for the privilege of viewing your strata scheme’s records.
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The original post is more than a year old – surely the issue would have been resolved by now
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Fair Trading is saying two different things becasue there are two different scenarios.
In the first, the tenant is nominated for election by an owner and, if elected, serves on the committee with the same rights as every other member.
In the second, the tenant is elected by other tenants and can attend and speak at strata committee meeting but can’t vote and can be excluded when “sensitive” matters are discussed..
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Just received this from the ACT:
Your article left out OCN ACT in Canberra.
Nearly 40% of ACT housing is now apartments and townhouses. The management sector is poorly developed and not skilled enough to deal with the bigger mixed use complexes (600+ units) now being built.
Employee managers know scripts but not the law and certainly not how to solve problems.
The ACT Government is still congratulating itself for striking off the worst manager after years of complaint, but more rogues need to be pushed out of the sector.
Recent amendments have complicated the situation for existing mixed use complexes rather than alleviated the problems, because they will eventually be orphan developments.
So problems come thick and fast to OCN ACT via Contact Us on our website. (www.ocnact.org.au)
We offer assistance to members and non members. Membership fees are low at $20 for individual and $20 plus $2 per unit for corporate membership.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.
Anything is possible in strata.
However, until there is another meeting, and that meeting rescinds the vote, you can move ahead. And when that second meeting occurs, you can tell them that you will be seeking compensation (under common law, not strata law) for having misled you by changing their minds.
I’ve never heard of a tenant blocking an owner’s renovation before. But there’s a first time for everything.
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The answer to question 1 is a definite yes.
As for Q2, it’s a lot simpler than outlined above.
Section 232.1 (e) in conjuction with Section 232.2 (below) allows you to apply for orders at NCAT to compel the committee to enforce the strata scheme’s by-laws. None other than then Fair Trading Minister Victor Dominello told me himself that he made this clear in his Second Reading of the Bill.
Just apply for mediation and then pursue the owners corp/strata committee under section 232.
Oh, and tell your strata manager to sharpen up their ideas … sure, they want to keep the committee happy but it shouldn’t be at other owners’ expense. They can issue a Notice To Comply without requiring committee approval when they see a by-law is being breached.
232 Orders to settle disputes or rectify complaints(1) Orders relating to complaints and disputes
The Tribunal may, on application by an interested person, original owner or building manager, make an order to settle a complaint or dispute about any of the following—
(e) an exercise of, or failure to exercise, a function conferred or imposed by or under this Act or the by-laws of a strata scheme,
(f) an exercise of, or failure to exercise, a function conferred or imposed on an owners corporation under any other Act.
(2) Failure to exercise a function
For the purposes of this section, an owners corporation, strata committee or building management committee is taken not to have exercised a function if—
(a) it decides not to exercise the function, or
(b) application is made to it to exercise the function and it fails for 2 months after the making of the application to exercise the function in accordance with the application or to inform the applicant that it has decided not to exercise the function in accordance with the application.
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The weasel words in your badly written by-law are “… other than in those parts of the common property … designated for standing or parking of vehicles or bicycles.”
The smart-arse lawyer who told them they weren’t in breach of the by-law should hang his or her head in shame for enabling parking thieves by interpreting the letter of the law rather than its spirit or intent.
There are a number of ways you could approach this but, if your DA designates four visitor parking spaces, this is what I would do:
First call an EGM or wait for your next AGM and propose an amendment to the bylaw so it reads something like: “a resident must not park or stand a vehicle or bicycle on the Common Property other than in those parts of the common property allocated for car parking on an exclusive use basis. Residents may not use visitor parking spaces for their own vehicles.”
You might also want to add a clause that specifies how long visitors may park their cars, e.g. a maximum of three hours bewteen 7.30 am and 7.30 pm and that they must vacate by 7.30 am if parking overnight, and excluding long-term guests of owners.
It sounds like there’s a fair chance this new by-law will be defeated, simply due to self-interest of the incumbents on the committee and the apathy of other owners. If it is, that’s OK as it allows you to move to the next stage which is to take your owners corporation to Fair Trading, then NCAT, to get orders (probably under sections 149 or 232 of the Act) to change the by-law.
I’m no lawyer but I think if the chairperson’s lawyer is correct, your parking by-law may well be invalid because it breaches a superior law – the planning laws under which your DA was issued – and therefore should be revoked and/or amended.
Mediation at Fair Trading is free and that may be enough to scare the chair and his cronies into behaving. If it does go to NCAT, you can tell them that you and your supporters will be seeking all costs from the recalcitrants. And make sure you let other owners join your cause officially so that they don’t get slugged with the special levy to cover any costs awards.
Just be careful that in pressing the “invalid by-law” issue, you don’t end up with no by-law at all.
If your by-law effort fails at the general meeting, you may have to hire an experienced strata lawyer to argue your case, but then seek costs, as described above, making sure to give your neighbours a chance to get on board so they don’t endf up losing out financially.
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