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@Tess McGill said:
Call your local council and ask for advice on dumped vehicles? There’s usually a process to be followed eg putting notices on the car that it will be moved after an amount of time. It may be that the Council can’t act because the car is dumped on private property …There is a process whereby the owners corp can do this without requiring the assistance of the local council or the police. Section 24 of the Strata Regulations (below) spells this out.
If you click here, you can download a poster that complies with the regulation. And if you look here, you’ll find a story which reveals that tow truck companies will come and remove and impound abandoned and/or illegally parked cars, provided due notice has been served.
34 Removal of motor vehicles: section 125 of Act(1) This clause applies to a motor vehicle left on common property that is placed so that it blocks an exit or entrance or otherwise obstructs the use of common property.
(2) The owners corporation may take action under this clause if the owners corporation has placed a removal notice on or near the motor vehicle and the requirements of the notice are not complied with within the period specified in the removal notice.
(3) A removal notice must:
(a) not be less than the size of an A4 piece of paper, and
(b) be placed in a position or be in a material so that the contents of the notice are not likely to be detrimentally affected by weather, and
(c) describe the motor vehicle and state the date and time the notice was issued, and
(d) state that the motor vehicle will be removed if it is not moved from the common property or so that it no longer obstructs common property before the date and time specified in the notice (being not earlier than 5 days after the notice was placed on or near the motor vehicle), and
(e) specify contact details for a member of the strata committee, the strata managing agent or a delegate of the owners corporation in relation to the notice.
(4) The owners corporation may cause a motor vehicle to be moved to another place on common property or to the nearest place to which it may be lawfully moved, or moved so that it no longer blocks an exit or entrance or otherwise obstructs the use of common property, and for that purpose the owners corporation is taken to be the owner of the motor vehicle.
(5) The Tribunal may, on application by the owners corporation, order that the owner of a motor vehicle moved to another place under this clause, pay to the owners corporation the reasonable costs incurred by the owners corporation in moving the motor vehicle.
(6) In this clause:
motor vehicle has the same meaning as in the Impounding Act 1993.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 way notice is given depends on the size of the block. Schedule 2 sets out the parameters (below) but buildings of less than 100 lots only require notice to be given on the noticeboard.
If proper notice wasn’t given, you’d have grounds to go to Fair Trading and NCAT and have the whole meeting, and decisions made at it, declared invalid.
SCHEDULE 2Part 2 Notices of meetings4 Notice of meetings for large strata schemes(1) The secretary of the owners corporation of a large strata scheme must give notice of a meeting to each other member of the strata committee (including any tenant member) at least 3 days before the meeting and to each owner.
(2) Notice is to be given in accordance with section 263 and by displaying the notice on the notice board (if any) maintained by the owners corporation.
5 Notice of meetings for other strata schemes(1) The secretary of the owners corporation of a strata scheme that is not a large strata scheme must give notice of a meeting to each other member of the strata committee at least 3 days before the meeting and to each owner.
(2) Notice is to be given by displaying the notice on the notice board maintained by the owners corporation or in accordance with section 263.
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@dwa said:
Interesting regulations where it seems that 1 lot does not equal 1 vote ….Given that any owner can call for a “poll vote” at any time, and that is decided by unit entitlements, and all special resolutions and elections are decided by poll votes as a default, a simple show of hands is increasingly a rare event, especially in larger schemes.
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@Kevin Hodge said:
At our AGM this year this member of the EC used his voting power to block the two special resolutions … because in his words “an email he recieved a couple of years ago hurt his feelings”If this was a common property rights by-law, you can take the recalcitrant owner to Fair Trading for mediation, pursuant to seeking orders under Section 149 (below) of the Act. And you make it clear in the committee minutes that that the reason for this action is their unreasonable refusal to pass the by-law.
Their superior levels of unit entitlements will mean that they are also paying more for the privilege of being pursued through NCAT.
There are other provisions for resolving non-property rights issues through orders at NCAT. Owners who have a majority of unit entitlements also have a responsibility as well as rights
149 Order with respect to common property rights by-laws(1) The Tribunal may make an order prescribing a change to a by-law if the Tribunal finds:
(a) on application made by an owner of a lot in a strata scheme, that the owners corporation has unreasonably refused to make a common property rights by-law, or
(b) on application made by an owner or owners corporation, that an owner of a lot, or the lessor of a leasehold strata scheme, has unreasonably refused to consent to the terms of a proposed common property rights by-law, or to the proposed amendment or repeal of a common property rights by-law, or
(c) on application made by any interested person, that the conditions of a common property rights by-law relating to the maintenance or upkeep of any common property are unjust.
(2) In considering whether to make an order, the Tribunal must have regard to:
(a) the interests of all owners in the use and enjoyment of their lots and common property, and
(b) the rights and reasonable expectations of any owner deriving or anticipating a benefit under a common property rights by-law.
(3) The Tribunal must not determine an application by an owner on the ground that the owners corporation has unreasonably refused to make a common property rights by-law by an order prescribing the making of a by-law in terms to which the applicant or, in the case of a leasehold strata scheme, the lessor of the scheme is not prepared to consent.
(4) The Tribunal may determine that an owner has unreasonably refused consent even though the owner already has the exclusive use or privileges that are the subject of the proposed by-law.
(5) An order under this section, when recorded under section 246, has effect as if its terms were a by-law (but subject to any relevant order made by a superior court).
(6) An order under this section operates on and from the date on which it is so recorded or from an earlier date specified in the order.
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@JC said:
If anyone knows of such a Strata Management company please post a clue to their whereabouts (in NSW)I’m going to admit to bias, here, an say the our major sponsors Strata Choice are worth considering (they are our major sponsors because we like and trust them).
However, there is the question raised here of the not-so-good strata manager working for a good strata management company. My advice would be to find a company you trust and then ask for personal recommendations and references for the strata manager who will be linked to your building. If they’re not up to par, ask to speak to someone else.
By the way, recommendations (and warnings) are best done by Personal Message (the little envelope logo at the top of this post) where you can communicate freely without breaching our “no names, no packdrill” policy.
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What is this about?
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Be aware that owners corps can and routinely do pass motions at their AGMs that lift restrictions on expenditure that would otherwise require approval at another general meeting.
You need to look for such a motion in the agenda or minutes of your last AGM.
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@Whoopi said:
Hi Jimmy are you thinking of Sect 108?Indeed I am:
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As a general rule, buildings that have a lot of interaction with their strata managers should look for an all-inclusive fee.
Buildings that rarely contact the SM might be better off paying a lower up-front fee while hoping their Schedule B charges – for everything from reading letters to making phone calls – don’t get out of control
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The machinery is common property and you have to insure it,. But you’re not insuring it against breakdown due to wear and tear, your insuring it against some catastrophe like a fire or it being damaged as a consequence of some unexpected event.
Take your car insurance, for instance. That doesn’t cover your annual service or break-downs. It covers it for theft and accident.
Your real “insurance” against the wear and tear of machinery comes in the form of regular professional maintenance. That’s the price you pay for making sure things work when you need them to.
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The owners corporation is responsible for all common property. In the absence of the special resolution by-law that they should have extracted from the renovator, then they, or their successors, have to wear the consequences.
This is why I have been saying for the past 15 year that there are serious problems with letting owners do what they want with common property on a nod and a wink.
It’s also why a common property by-law requires someone to be given responsibility for the ongoing maintenance (with that defaulting to the owners corp if they are stupid enough not to insist that responsibility shift to the renovator).
So look no further – if the Owners Corp can’t come up with a record of a registered by-law saying the previous owner has taken responsibility for the upkeep of the balcony, then it’s still their responsibility and they are obliged to fix it.
You can take that to the bank … and NCAT.
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@gbrownie said:
Do Strata Managers usually attend NCAT and speak on behalf of the applicants? Lots of people have said our strata manager should have prepared the info and fought on behalf of the OCThey can and usually will if you ask them to, and pay them extra for doing so. But they won’t necessarily take up cudgels for you on every issue, as a matter of routine.
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