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I have just re-read the law and the regs and it seems a candidate for election to the EC can be nominated by an owner who is him or herself standing for election. So cross-nominations are allowed provided it’s not co-owners of a lot nominating each other.
Have a look at this, specifically Part 5, which describes the process. Meanwhile, (below) here are the basics with one additional point – you can’t nominate someone else if you are not entitled to vote at the meeting, meaning you have to be an owner AND be up to date with your levies to nominate someone (although neither qualification is required to be a candidate).
2 Constitution of executive committees for strata schemes with more than 2 lots
(1) This clause applies to an owners corporation for a strata scheme comprising more than 2 lots.
(2) The executive committee is to consist of such number of members, being not more than 9, as the owners corporation may determine.
(3) The members of an executive committee must be elected at each annual general meeting of the owners corporation.
(4) A person is not eligible for election as a member of an executive committee unless the person is:
(a) an individual who is an owner,
(b) a company nominee of a corporation that is an owner, or
(c) an individual who is not an owner but who is nominated for election by an owner who is not a candidate for election.
(5) A person who is co-owner of a lot may not be a candidate for election as a member of the executive committee unless the person is nominated for office:
(a) by an owner who is not a co-owner of the lot, or
(b) by a co-owner of the lot who is not a candidate for election as a member.
(6) An owner of a lot who is not a co-owner of the lot may nominate himself or herself for election as a member of the executive committee.
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Think of all those grinning politicians at the ballot box on election day. Do you think they are voting for the other guy? If you won’t vote for yourself, why would anyone else vote for you.
Self nomination, however, is different under NSW law. You can’t nominate yourself if you are a co-owner (but your co-owner can nominate you provided they aren’t standing for election). [Edited]
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I don’t know why we are even discussing this. Get the owner to move the damned car and then all the legal ifs and buts are irrelevant.
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@lefty said:
An owner consistently parks his vehicle on the common property driveway, leaving a narrow passage for other cars to get by. At the moment there is no by-law giving him special permission to park there.Is there a by-law saying he can’t park there? If not, there should be. He is a parking thief, stealing common property to save paying for a parking space.
One other thought, a while ago our building had a repeat offender who parked his motorbike in a space right in front of a fire hose (rahter than hire s bike space from the building). We put a notice on his car saying the fire department had told us that if they inspected and found the bike there, thery would move it by whatever means necessary. It was a lie, but it worked.
How about informing this parking thief that his vehicle is blocking access that may be required in the event of a fire and you have contacted the fire department with a view to having the vehicle towed.
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@isydowner said:
Hello fellow chatters, in relation to legal professionals that are engaged to oppress or be aggressive towards lot owners, what do you do if they lie to the owners corporation or the Tribunal.I ask because misleading and deceptive conduct appears to be the norm in CTTT and NCAT yet no government body does anything about it!
Surely they have a responsibility to be truthful and fair?
A friend is in a situation that entails an autocratic committee who hide items from owners and then give them the bill once the lies have won out! But other owners are shocked once they find out how much money is being wasted on legal services… That aren’t considered by anyone other than the Exe Commies.
My situation was they put someone else’s condenser on my balcony and had a strata lawyer claim it was to fulfil its section 62 requirements… Not over yet thanks to Whales advice.
I am hoping Strata Reforms can weed out bad lawyers who engage in this sort of conduct, but what do you do if your the victim… and bad committee members are self serving Hitlers!?!
Other peoples experiences would be good to know, as would how they dealt with it and how successful their actions were.
Cheers all,
Thom R
The problem isn’t the lawyers but the system. Lawyers are paid to represent their clients, not the truth. They accept what their clients are saying is true unless there is clear evidence that it isn’t. I can’t recall if you have to take an oath at an NCAT hearing but if you do, then lying under oath is perjury. The problem is that even the dumbest lawyer is smarter than many of the NCAT members.
These days, petitioners at NCAT have to seek permission to be represented by lawyers. Perhaps this will lead to more cases being decided on provable fact and the law than persuasive arguments by m’learned friends.
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It’s taken a couple of month since this post but as of yesterday, there is a way of printing an entire thread in one hit. Have a look at the little printer symbol on the right in the topic header (not the slightly bigger one at the top left of each post). Click on that and you can print as much or as little of a thread as you wish, all in one go.
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Ask them for a copy of the by-laws that the others used (Ha!). Or suggest that since this is a common occurrence, they create a catch-all by-law that covers all such renovations past, present and future.
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Don’t know if you have already thought of this but I would go after the parents – as owners of the property they are responsible for the behaviour of their tenants and guests.
Get your local paper involved – they will love the phrase “Brat-dumping” which is what we call privilieged parents forcing other people to live with the results of their lack of parenting skills.
Show them all the NTCs and warning letters and invite them to hear the music at its worst
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This factsheet from WA’s Environmental Protection Agency is so technically detailed, it is almost meaningless. However, it does say that you can call the local council during office hours and police at other times to deal with noise. Either can issue a Noise Abatement Direction which, if not complied with, can lead to the seizure of sound equipment and fines. The paragraphs below are extracts from the factsheet.
As in most other states, Owners Corps can’t issue fines directly but they can take residents to SAT to have fines imposed. However, it’s worth noting that this factsheet from SAT says they can impose “a fine for a breach of a by-law if the by-law specifies a fine for its breach.” That seems to imply that your by-laws have to have a fine for excessive noise specified – so maybe you do need a new by-law after all.
FYI, strata Law in WA is undergoing a major rewrite which will result in all disputes being heard at the State Administrative Tribunal.
Noise Abatement Direction
Where an authorised person or police officer believes that an unreasonable noise is being emitted from any premises he or she can issue a noise abatement direction to the occupier of the premises (and anybody making or contributing to the noise) to stop the noisy activity. Failure to comply with a noise abatement direction is an offence. Failure to comply with a direction also entitles the authorised person or police officer to seize the equipment that is causing the noise. To assist in the exercise of these powers, authorised persons are entitled to enter any property and demand of any person the name and address of the occupier of the premises.
Prosecution
Where an offence is committed against the Act, a prosecution may be commenced by the CEO of DEC, or for lesser offences, by an authorised person. Unreasonable noise caused by equipment (see above) may also be challenged through a private prosecution. Usually this requires three occupiers of premises directly affected by the noise to commence proceedings together. Less than three people may start an action where less than three occupiers were affected, the other occupiers are unwilling to participate in the action or the person who is bringing the action was affected to a significantly greater degree than were other occupiers. If a prosecution is successful, the EP Act authorises the court to make a range of orders beyond merely awarding damages. The court may order the forfeiture of any equipment used in the offence, and can also make orders to prevent recurrence of the offence.
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@kiwipaul said:
The problem you have is your the only one affected in your Strata. I’m not familiar with WA Strata rules but I would assume they are similar to other states.To enforce the noise bylaw you (or the strata or SM) would have to go to conciliation and then adjudication to get a ruling against the offender.
Oh dear, you know what they say about “assume”, KP.
First of all, strata law is so different in different states that you wouldn’t assume anything. By-laws may also differ wildly from strata scheme to strata scheme. And finally, if Notices To Comply have been issued, in NSW, at any rate, there is no need to go to mediation. The only assumption I would make is that it is probably different in other state (in which case you have at least a 1 in 6 chance of being right.)
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Whale has already answered this more than satisfactorily. Posters note: There are only three Staratgurus on this website out of more than 1800 active members. They achieved that role by dint of reliable advice provided over a number of years, so they all deserve some respect.
But to reiterate the facts, I have heard of chairpersons who get paid illegally, and it’s usually because they bully their EC members into agreeing to it, nobody challenges it and there are no StrataKops who will come charging into their EC meetings to stop it. I have also heard of chairpersons who get paid because everybody appreciates the hours they put in and the hard work they do and they are terrified that they will just stop doing it if their time and effort aren’t adequately compensated.
But the law is quite clear on this, as linked to previously:
25 Can members of the executive committee be paid?
An owners corporation may pay to a person who is the chairperson, secretary, treasurer or a member of the executive committee such amount as the owners corporation determines at an annual general meeting in recognition of services performed by the person for the owners corporation in the period since the last annual general meeting.
In other words, if it’s done at all, it has to be done retrospectively and it has to be agreed by a majority of the owners at an AGM. This is different, by the way, from reimbursing the chair for reasonable expenses (phones, photocopying etc) but, again, that should be done retrospectively although it probably can be OK’d by the EC.
In my humble opinion, if the running of a building is so demanding that the chairman feels they should be paid illegally in advance, then may be time to think about getting a strata manager. At least he or she will know what they’re doing and carry professional indemnity insurance in case it turns out they don’t.
As Whale pointed out earlier, anyone who expects to get paid must carry the right insurances, at the very least. And i would add that any chairman who demands payment in advance hasn’t bothered to learn the basics of strata law and should be disqualified on that count alone.
And to answer the original question, as other have observed, it doesn’t matter if this is common practice or not – you can’t agree to pay any committee member for their work as a committee member until the AGM at the end of the year for which they expect to be paid.
The logic behind this is simple – if they have annoyed too many owners, they’ll get nothing and if they have their hand out at the beginning of their term, they don’t know the first thing about strata and they need to think about why they are volunteering in the first place.
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We had an elderly friend who use to drive her neighbours mad with her complaints about their noise (which was quite reasonable), including banging on walls and ceilings. It turned out she had a hypersensitivity to sound, presumably cause by ageing. Have a look at this fact sheet . It’s tricky to raise as a topic for discussion but it should be considered.
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If it’s falling apart and it’s common property then you can take a Section 62 against the owners corp demanding that they at least repair it.
But Whale is right and I’m not sure that it’s too late to get this ludicrous situation dealt with. CTTT was a konga line of clowns and NCAT doesn’t seem much better. It’s time they had a clear-out from top to bottom. A kid with a computer could give you a better answer than some of these jumped-up wannabe Judge Judys
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It’s an interesting by-law – and has some obvious flaws that a decent lawyer would prise open. If I had been drafting it, I would have made it two separate rules, so as to make it less like the fine it is clearly intended to be.
In other words, I would have one by-law that says the pass key is the owner or tenant’s responsibility and that any misuse of the pass could lead to it being cancelled.
I would then have another by-law that said owners had to pay X amount for the replacement of the key if it was lost, broken or cancelled. I would also have a system in place to return keys free of charge to people who could prove they were not misused.
The 2 am curfew has no legal basis that i can think of.
There’s been a lot of heat about buildings that have felt compelled to introduce this kind of “draconian” security. But let’s not kid ourselves, if it wasn’t for people trying to make a fast buck by cramming students into flats or letting them out as holiday rentals, or using them as brothels, there would be no need for any this.
Maybe if some of the people running off to Redfern Legal worked WITH the building managers to help clear these scumbags out of apartment blocks, everybody would be better off.
More than half the residents in apartment blocks are tenants. In the inner city, that’s as high as 85 percent in some blocks. Many of the people over-crowding flats and letting them as holiday homes on online agencies like Airbnb are tenants, not owners.
So maybe it’s about time renters stopped portraying themselves an victims and stepped up to help build better communities. Perhaps then nobody would have to put up with this over-the-top security which puts terrible restrictions on ordinary people but, let’s face it, isn’t there for fun.
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@lime2 said:
If I enter the building with a visitor and am required to sign them in using the ipad, I am embarrassed when security say something like “Make sure you sign out before 2am to avoid being fined”. It is as if its back in the 1960s when non married adults of the opposite sex are judged if they stay over. Reading the by-laws, there is nothing about guests needing to sign in visitors and/or visitors not being able to stay past 2am.
Owners corporations and management companies can’t issue fines, even for by-law breaches (which require a by-law in the first place). Only NCAT can issue fines and that has to be for a breach of a by-law. However, many buildings bluff their residents by threatening fines and wheel clamping etc when they know they are not legally allowed to do so. They count on the ignorance of their residents about strata law.
- No privacy policy: You can make a complaint to the Office of the Australian Privacy Commissioner about private entities who have a turnover of more than 3 million dollars. This building collects strata levies over 5 million annually, although I am not sure the building management company is the same entity as the entity who collects the strata levies. More info: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-act/the-privacy-act.
The management company is only collecting levies on behalf of the Owners Corporation, which is a Corporation, in regards to privacy laws, so regulations and restrictions about what the Owners Corp can and can’t do apply. – JT
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