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Tha Strata Act clearly sets out all the required procedures foir AGMs and other meetings, including agendas and minutes. It's therefore possible to challenge any desicisions that were taken at a meeting that wasn't properly constituted.
In your son's case, given that he is selling up anayway, I'd be demanding to see the quotes for painting, as you have suggested, to reassure himself nothing untowrds (apart from casual incompetence) is happening.
The more serious issue is that a savvy purchaser might start looking for minutes of meetings etc and be scared off when they can't find any. This is a problem with some self-managed buildings, many of which have trundled along for years with “garden fence” meetings. Now that older owners are moving out, the easygoing approach doesn't work – especially since strata law has changed a lot since the buildings first went up.
Your son needs to get involved and demand that they either provide the paperwork demanded by the Act or appoint a strata manager to do it for them. Alternatively, as a compromise, they could subscribe to a self-manage strata online service like StratamanageIT.
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My understanding (and maybe one of our professionals will correct me if I'm wrong) is that you can't pay office-bearers a wage but you can award a gratuity in retrospect at an AGM for work done the previous year.
If I were in your position I would have two motions at the next AGM – one to award a reasonable payment for work done and the other, should the first one fail, to employ someone to do the work at commercial rates.
I know which one I'd be voting for.
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Only a general meeting can agree on levies, special or otherwise although an EC can take a recommendation to the meeting (as they should).
The decision to have a special levy requires only a simple majority vote at a general meeting, although that can include proxies and, if necessary, a poll vote based on unit entitlements.
Unit owners can't refuse to be bound by any legitimate agreements reached at properly constituted general meetings. There is a basic principle in strata that your responsibilities to the Owners Corporation of which you are part are “without limit”.
You can apply to the CTTT to be excused from paying a levy but unless there is some highly unusual circumstances (and hardship isn't one of them) you are unlikely to be successful. Also, if you default on your levies you lose your voting rights at a general meeting.
If you refuse to pay levies, special or otherwise, you can be pursued for the debt and may find you are then also responsible for the cost of the debt collection. However, a reasonable EC will take your circumstances into account and
allow you a little leeway before they unleash the debt collectors on
you.
Your best options are to oppose the special levy through raising support at a general meeting or, failing that, get your bank to extend your mortgage (which many lenders will do if they see the special levy being used to improve or protect the value of the property). Trying to fight this in the face of a majority of owners in favour will be a waste of time, emotional energy and money.
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Maybe this time you should hit her with a Notice To Comply which carries the possibility of a fine ans well as a renewed notice to quit. Whatever the CTTT notice says, she's taking the mickey. The tenant is also clearly in breach of her tenancy agreement so she should be getting a separate notice to quit from the owner. If the dog is still howling, I'd also be calling the council Rangers and the RSPCA – leaving a dog, the most sociable of animals, on its own all day is downright cruelty. Sounds like this tenant thinks she can do what she wants because she reckons she's a lot smarter than everyone else. So hit her with everything you've got (figuratively speaking, of course) – thet might make her think again.
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If the decision was made outside the confines of a proper meeting – ie, there was no notice of the meeting, no agenda and no minutes of the meeting any orders purporting to be from the EC would almost certainly be thrown out. EC's have a certain amount of leeway to help with the day-to-day running of their buildings but when it comes to issues of breaches of by-laws, the CTTT tends to insist that the letter of the law is followed if for no other reason than owners need to know action is being taken against them and have a chance to defend themselves at the meeting.
On the question of getting rid of them, the easiest way is to either reduce the size of the EC at the next meeting and them make sure you have the numbers to get your people elected or stand allternative candidates as a “ticket” (again assuming you have the numbers).
But be careful not to let your campaigning get out of hand. Thers is only limited “privilege' in Executive Committee communications and if your criticisms can be shown to be defamatory and, even worse, malicious you could be sued (I mention this because exactly that has happened to my partner).
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I’d say, based on what you’ve written, that you have to have notice served three months before the expiration of the contract by agreement reached at a general meeting (not necessarily the AGM). In other words, you could call an Extraordinary General Meeting specifically to terminate the agreement.
The other matter is trickier but, ironically, may offer a solution. You could approach the strata management firm right now and say you are only prepared to continue with them if they write into the contract that the preferred manager will be handling your building. If they refuse to do that, start the procedure immediately to organise an EGM to cancel the contract. It’s unusual but you are the customer and you have the right to choose your manager. Since you are running out of time, you might get the EC to issue the notice to terminate right now, with the proviso that it is subject to confirmation at a general meeting. And don’t sign another contract that is so hard to get out of. Next time, make sure notice of termination can be issued by the EC, not the Owners Corporation. There’s no point in having a termination clause if it’s impossible to invokeIf 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.
Absolutely. But make sure you have acceptance of your nomination in writing and that you have your own proxy votes sorted out.
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This raises anither question – the meeting may have been quorate with proxies included but what about non-financial members? I know they can't vote at General Meetings but what about the EC? By the way, you could challenge a decision that's been made “illegally” at the CTTT. But it would probably be more efficient, less stressful and more reliable to put your own house in order at an EGM, as it were.
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The answer is actually very simple. Call another general meeting, make sure your supporters' levies are up to date, gather all the proxies you can and overturn the decision.
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JimmyT here, Jude. 75 percent in favour – or more accurately, no more than 25 percent of those voting against at a general meeting of owners – will get this past. In a tight vote, you can ask for a poll, meaning Unit Entitlements rather than just a show of hands come into play.
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How cool to be quoted on a tee-shirt. Suddenly I feel like I am part of pop culture. Shame you spelt my name wrong (Jim Thompson with a P would be selling silk teeshirts), but hey, you can't have everything! The teeshirt is here and the rest of the site is very stylish too. Wear the teeshirt at EC meetings by all means but not, dare I suggest, at Tribunal hearings.
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There are two general issues here – the first is whether or not you are liable for damage caused to the kitchen and secondlywhther the owner has a responsibility, as a member of the Owners Corporation, to report that there was a problem.
The first issue is more clear-cut than it seems; generally speaking, if a failure to maintain common property has caused damage to an individual's property then the Owners Corporation is liable for repairs.
Now, this is where I get into dangerous waters for the simple reason that I'm not a lawyer. However, I reckon a court (not necessarily the CTTT) would possibly rule that the failure to alert you to the problem has contributed to the damage and therefore this owner can't expect an entirely free kitchen out of this. However, what you really want is to avoid going through the CTTT (which is, frankly, a lottery these days and they will end up nudging you towards the District Court anyway).
You also want to avoid going to court if you can becasue it will cost everyone time, money and – most importantly – heartache.
So my advice would be to take advantage of the free mediation service offered by the Community Legal Service (click here) and try to resolve this as amicably as possible.
Leading on from this, I have a question for our legal eagles – do individual owners have a duty under strata law to inform the Owners Corporation that there's a problem with Common Property?
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The first thing that occurs to me is whether or not there is a shortage of spaces for bona fide visitors. If not, the next point is why would you give away a valuable resource to a resident just becasue they have more cars than they have spaces for.
In other words, you could (theoretically) be renting these spaces at the going rate for car spaces in your area and provided you aren't renting the spaces to non-residents, you're benefitting the whole building.
However, the on major consideration is whther or not your allocation of visitor car spaces is part of the Development Approval for the building. If it is, you could run foul of your local council because you have breached the terms of the DA.
How would they ever know? The first time someone can't get a visitor space or finds that all the allocated spaces have been rented out, they could be on the phone to the council.
But if you can avoid these various pitfalls, my view would be to install pop-up bollards and rent out the spaces with the proviso that they have to be returned for the use of bona fide visitors at times of high usage like Christmas and New Year, for instance.
You'll need special resolution by-laws to do this properly but I'm sure there are lots of buildings with “informal” arrangements along these lines.
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Struggler wrote: If the car wasn't parked where it shouldn't, then the vehicle wouldn't have had to negotiate in reverse to get out of there and would not have knocked the mirror.
Have I misread this? He's parking on the grass (which is his) and that's where the car was damaged by a passing oven, no?
I get the whole thing with too many cars for the car spaces (especially with more kids growing up to drive cars but not using them to leave home) but this seems like a bit of give and take is seriously lacking in this development.
It sounds like NRB is OK on the grass where his car should be reasonably safe from reversing neighbours and itinerant kitchen appliances. On the other hand, if the grass is also common property, then there's only one solution, either park on the street or sweet-talk the neighbours.
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