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I don’t think you would need to drop the ceiling. I understood LP to have only mentioned that because she wanted to cover her original ‘popcorn’ ceiling. I would expect that you could surface-mount LED fittings directly onto (rather than through) your existing ceiling.
I’d suggest saving yourself some bother by not installing down-lights that penetrate the ceiling. Firstly you avoid the concerns you have raised. Secondly, down-lights amount to a hole in the ceiling that you can’t insulate. They are a place to lose heat in winter to gain heat from in summer.
Instead I would suggest getting surface mounting LED fittings that give the same effect but don’t run into the other issues.
The buck stops with the executive committee and the Owner’s Corporation. Managing agents sometime run things by default because the committee or OC doesn’t. However, the committee and OC have the authority to instruct the managing agent, even against the managing agent’s advice or preference (so long as it would not be illegal). The managing agent should give advice to the committee and owners because they are employed by the OC to be expert in OC management but ultimately it is the committee (or the OC at a general meeting) that is responsible for decisions.
The managing agent’s function is simply to assist the committee undertaking its roles. So, for example, a managing agent might do all the mechanics of accounting, receiving levies and paying invoices for services and products to the OC, but the treasurer is responsible to satisfy the committee that those functions are being performed properly.
If the managing agent is saying or doing something you don’t like, talk to a committee member. The committee represents you as a member of the OC. The managing agent is just an employee of the OC, albeit one who might be able to provide good advice to any OC member or the committee.
Unless there is some quirk in NSW law, I expect it is like in the ACT. Here, if the Act specifies that a particular decision requires a resolution of the owners corporation (OC), that can only be done at a general meeting of owners. For many decisions, an ordinary resolution is sufficient (simple majority of the meeting). Some particular types of more serious decisions require higher resolution standards such as a special resolution (a majority in favour and fewer than 25% opposed in NSW) or an unopposed resolution or a unanimous resolution.
The powers of the EC are limited to functions of the OC that don’t specifically need a general meeting resolution. Even then, if the OC has made a decision, the EC is bound to follow the OC’s direction. Eg. the OC might resolve that the EC should follow a set of guidelines when acting in some area within its powers. An OC does not have the power to delegate a decision to the EC if the Act says the decision must be a general meeting resolution. In the ACT, the EC’s functions are described as follows. I expect NSW has something similar.
(1) The executive committee of an owners corporation exercises the functions of the corporation.
(2) Without limiting subsection (1), the executive committee’s functions include the following:
(a) developing matters in relation to—
(i) the common property; and
(ii) the strategic affairs of the owners corporation;
(b) submitting matters developed under paragraph (a) to the owners corporation for consideration;
(c) monitoring the owners corporation’s financial performance;
(d) approving the annual financial statements and budget for presentation to the owners corporation at the corporation’s annual general meeting;
(e) supervising the treasurer, secretary, manager (if any) and communications officer (if any);
(f) carrying out the decisions of the owners corporation made at general meetings.
(3) The executive committee must exercise its functions—
(a) as the corporation directs by resolution at a general meeting; or
(b) in the absence of a resolution—as the committee considers appropriate.
<i>Note </i>The resolution required under s (3) (a) is an ordinary resolution, unless the Act provides that the resolution should be a special, unopposed or unanimous resolution—see sch 3, s 3.14 (Decision-making at general meetings).
…But equally surely a majority of owners of the common property have a right to say who can use their common property and how it can be used? …
Every resident has the same rights and obligations over common property, owner or tenant. The owners corporation, that is, all the owners at a general meeting, can pass valid rules/by-laws or house rules about what constitutes reasonable use and enjoyment of the common property. All can use and enjoy the common property, so long as they do not unreasonably interfere with the reasonable use and enjoyment of the common property by other residents.
The differences between the strata acts of different jurisdictions are many, strange and mysterious!
JT said:
under section 85 (below) the OC – and I believe this means the committee, if they have been given those powers at a general meeting – can decide not to impose the penalty interest and can also organise a payment plan.
My reading of the section you have quoted is that the OC can’t delegate this to the committee since it is specified that the decisions must by made by the OC by resolution.
In our OC a certain function had been long believed to have been delegated to the OC. When things fell in a heap, our legal advice was that the OC did not have the power to delegate a function to the committee and the committee could not exercise a function of the OC if the Act specified that a resolution of the OC was required to exercise that function.
Unless there is something elsewhere in the NSW Act that I am unaware of that allows an OC to resolve to delegate functions, including those for which the Act specifies a resolution of the OC. The ACT act does not have any such provision.
Judging from past posts the first poster is a tenant. They previously mentioned an issue regarding their pet which might be the FT matter.
Even so, there is rarely any reason why minutes that need to unambiguously refer to a person can’t refer to ‘the tenant of lot 123’ and communications can’t refer to ‘a FT matter concerning a tenant and their pet’.
All owners are party to Tribunal matters involving the owners corporation so they are entitled to be informed about such matters. Meeting minutes have to accurately record attendance. So you can’t be entirely invisible. However, there are ways to minimise a person’s exposure in sensitive matters. For example, minutes could record decisions about or correspondence with ‘the owner of lot X’.
A letter to OC members may be needed to properly inform them of progress on a Fair Trading matter to which they are a party. However, depending on the nature of the matter, it might be possible to use an anonymising formula by referring just to ‘a lot owner who …’.
One of the ACT’s default rules does not require more than ‘reasonable notice’ and a ‘reasonable time’. Nonetheless, I agree with LP that a time that suits everyone else might not be a reasonable time for some owners and the OC should be accommodating.
PS. We have also not proceeded to use a debt collection agency when we have been able to negotiate a payment plan between the owner, the EC and the managing agent. IE. We have been sensitive on the rare occasion when an owner had some genuine difficulty and we resolved it without acrimony, while also not disadvantaging the owners who did pay on time.
Andy,
I can’t answer for NSW, but in the ACT, our Act specifies 10% simple interest to be charged on overdue levies. This statutory default can only be changed to an amount less than 10% or up to 20% by special resolution. Perhaps your act has a similar provision.
By way of comparison, our levy notices include a statement:
“After levy due date first letter $0.00
+14 days after second letter $55.00
+14 days after final letter $110.00
+7 days after Notice to debt collection agency $250+legal fees”
These service charges by the managing agent are included as terms in our management agreement, which are the managing agent’s default position. Since the management agreement is agreed by general meeting resolution, the OC has, in effect, resolved to agree to these service charges for overdue levies on top of the interest we are required to charge. In practice, a little bit more time tends to be left before getting heavy but our OC has not often had problems with unpaid levies.
I am surprised this seems so hard in NSW. The ACT has section 31 of our act which explicitly empowers the OC to bill a resident for expenses it has incurred, including a reasonable legal expense reasonably incurred, while carrying out its functions, including maintenance or anything else it is authorised by the act to do, if the expense was caused by a wilful or negligent act or omission or a breach of its rules by an owner or an occupier of a unit. The amount spent by the OC is recoverable by the owners corporation from the owner as a debt.
So, here in the ACT, for the example given, if reasonable notice and other proper procedures were followed in order to gain access to a unit for a required safety inspection and the owner then did not allow that access and that required rebooking of an inspector at a further cost, then I would say an ACT OC would be on solid ground to just bill the owner for that extra expense caused by the owner unless the owner had some reasonable excuse such as sudden illness that meant it was not a wilful or negligent act or omission. If it were challenged, I’d expect the OC would succeed at the Tribunal.
Does NSW not have something similar? Usually the NSW seems more comprehensive in covering such things.
Now over to you NSWelsh to make sure the returned NSW LNP government gets moving on its plan to make it easier to install solar panels, battery storage and electric vehicle charging points in strata buildings. At the risk of being political, my impression of that side of politics is that they tend to be interested in the environment for about two minutes before an election but not so much afterwards.
I suspect this is one of those things to which people have greatly differing responses. For some it might an offensive eye-sore but I would be in line with Jimmy T on this. I think, within reasons, a few shoes by a front door looks more homely and it is generally harmless. I would not bother doing anything about this unless there were so many shoes as to be a genuine hazard. A little bit of untidiness can make things look less starkly institutional.
I would be much more hard-line about things like a consistent colour scheme, shapes, forms and materials for the building structure than more ephemeral things like pot-plants or shoes.