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Is it unreasonable to assume that a strata committee that ignores problems with the lift fot three years, then delays installation of as long as they can, might have chosen the cheapest rather than the best option when finally forced to do something.
Is it also unreasonable to assume that they wouldn’t be falling over themselves to get the lift company there to fix it, pronto.
This isn’t a one-off and the strata committee has demonstrated a long-standing pattern of not giving a dam about the residents. THAT is what the member should have been looking at and it’s why he or she should have used their dicretion to send the cureent SC packing and call for a new committee to be elected.
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You can’t just ask on the day ‘Oh and BTW, can we sack the SC as well?’
True, but the Member has the discretion to do so.
Section 238: The Tribunal may, on its own motion or on application by an interested person, make any of the following orders: (a) an order removing a person from a strata committee … (c) an order removing one or more of the officers of an owners corporation from office and from the strata committee.
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I think you’re being a wee bit harsh, Austman. This is a long-running saga of the willful neglect of a strata block by absentee owners whose only concern seems to have been to mimimise their levies at the great cost (in terms of liveability) to resident owners and tenants.
What the SC and SM could have done was to make sure the new lift was fit for purpose before it was installed (by not going for the cheapest opting, for instance?).
What NCAT could have done was kicked the recalcitrant office-bearers off the committee and let resident owners run the building. These NCAT Members have powers that they either don’t know about or are too timid to use.
About as handy as a chocolate teapot!
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You can ask for one or all members of the committee to be removed under Section 238 of the Act but the Tribunal is unlikely to leave you without any form of management.
So, unless you have an alternative committee ready to go, the Tribunal is more likely to agree to an order under Section 237 of the Act, replacing the committee with a strata manager who will undertake all of the functions of the Owners Corp. That means that for one or probably two years you and your neighbours could have little or no input into the running of the building which will be done “by the book”.
As we often say, it’s one of those “careful what you wish for” outcomes as sometimes the cure feels worse than the original disease. But at least your lifts would work.
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Sir Humphrey’s advice above is pretty solid.
But since you are going back to NCAT anyway, you could ask for orders under Section 90 that when the costs of legal action are paid, that you are not obliged to pay any additional levies to cover their legal costs.
You could also ask for supplementary orders that the Owners Corp immediately raise a special levy to pay for the lift repairs.
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Download the Act here and search for “penalty”. Most of the fines for owners corps are for things like not keeping fproper accounts that range from maximums of $550 to $1100. FYI, a penalty point is $110. There are much bigger fines for developers who don’t follow procedure and landlords who breach over-crowding regulations ($11k for a second offence). But $5000 for being a crap owners corp, sadly I couldn’t find that anywhere.
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The Hood wrote:
Things do not need to be fixtures to be additions to the common property.
In your opinion …
A statement of fact needs to be backed by some ruling or authority.
“…on the information I have …”
Cite your source, please. If you can present a case that isn’t just your opinion, for instance, is a Tribunal ruling or a corner of strata law that I have missed, I am happy to put it here … and I might just turn it into a front-page post. We need to know!
Otherwise, let’s just agree to disagree.
The removal of water tanks could have been for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with changes to common property (regardless of what the owners corp chose as their avenue for change). Likewise the hypothetical shed I mentioned.
If I put a beach umbrella on my balcony, bedded in a heavy but moveable base, is that an addition to common property? I don’t think so, but I might be asked to move it because it breaches other by-laws to do with what’s allowed on balconies or the impact on the look of the building.
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Ziggy wrote:
Under what section of the SSMA can a person remove all or some of the Strata Committee.
Section 238 allows NCAT to order the removal of committee members or office bearers from their positions.
Section 237 allows the Tribunal to replace the whole owners corporation with a strata manager.
If you can get it, section 238 is preferable as a compulsoty manager can be a cure that feels worse than the disease.
Is there a section that also refers to financial penalties that can be imposed on them as well.
Not that I know of. Strata committees have a lot of protection from the consequences made in good faith. However, if you can prove that individual members wilfully acted wrongly or illegally, you might have some recourse through civil actions.
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Nope. Not buying it. The common property has not been altered as the planters can be lifted and taken away and everything would be back to normal without the need for remediation.
If I take the wheels off a car and leave it on bricks on common property, have I altered it? I don’t think so. How about if I build a shed that sits on common property but isn’t fixed to it? Same story, I reckon.
Sometimes we are looking to apply aspects of strata law in ways that were never intended. There are times when we just have to apply common sense. There are other strata laws that apply to the car and shed scenario but S108 isn’t one of them.
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Not withstanding all of the above, I think I would go a little tougher (or at least appear to do so).
Firstly (after approval from the comittee) I would issue an invoice for the previous year’s levies with the proviso that anyone who could prove a payment had been made (with the threshhold for proof fairly low) to have the proven amount credited against their account.
I would also add that anyone who hadn’t paid the full amount (or anything) would have the penalty interest of 10 per cent waived provided they paid up withing 30 days.
I would invite anyone who had paid but who did not have any evidence of payment to submit a notarised statutory declaration that they had paid, explaining how, when and why they had no proof, again within 30 days.
And finally I would offer the option of negotiating a payment plan for anyone who couldn’t pay what they owed, on a case by case basis, subject to negotiation.
Hopefully that would flush out the cheats without causing undue hardship to an unlucky few or, indeed, to those who had paid in full and were effectively carrying non-payers.
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Brianpr wrote
Now there’s no need to glue them down – you’ll need a forklift to move them.
But you wouldn’t need a by-law to install them as you aren’t changing common property.
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Austman and Sir Humphrey are right … but I can thing of a few instances in my past where people have been desperately scrabbling for votes to pass or prevent some controversial by-law. And I love the idea of the zombie proxy voting for the dead.
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