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I’d be really worried that a building of 55 units has only $4000. An audit might not find any impropriety or errors in the accounting but you really should have more than that accumulating for planned maintenance. I.e. a sinking fund plan. Not sure how the NSW legislation puts it now but I expect it is not so different from the ACT, where an OC must have a sinking fund plan adopted by general meeting resolution and must review it at least every 5 years.
I have no idea if there was such a section or not but surely it hardly needed stating that an EC member should always have acted with due care and diligence! (Though obviously the people drafting the new act must have thought it did need stating!)
Either you are reading the strata plan incorrectly or the strata manager is. I would hope that the draftsperson engaged by the OC would clarify the matter. That does seem to be the way to go.
Just to be sure, I would make a point of talking to that person so that they can either understand your interpretation and confirm that you are correct or show where you have misinterpreted the plan.
When our OC changed certain conditions on animal keeping, the rule included ‘grandfathering’ of existing animals that were accustomed to the previous arrangements. They will die out eventually and all new animals and their owners must abide by the new conditions. That is an example of being reasonable!
I am not aware of what the NSW legislation says but if it is like the ACT legislation, then the proposed bylaw would be likely to be invalid. In the ACT the Act says a unit owner must not have a pet without permission from the owners corporation but that is balanced by a provision that the OC must not unreasonably refuse.
So, the OC might easily manage to find grounds to reasonably refuse an elephant but probably not a goldfish. Since the Act takes precedence over any rule/bylaw, does NSW have something like the ACT provision in its Act?
In our OC, in the ACT, we adopted a rule that gives automatic permission for most common ordinary instances of pet keeping such as one or two dogs or cats or small numbers of ‘small animals’ such as fish, mice, cage birds, guinea pigs. Our rule retains the right to withdraw permission in instances of substantial repeated nuisance (IE. reasonable demonstrated non-trivial grounds, not just one person getting a bit bothered once).
Our rule still requires residents to apply for instances of unusual animal keeping not covered by our standard provisions. For example there might be some uncommon species that might make an excellent pet but most people wouldn’t know. Then a reasonable committee might require some research before they can decide whether it would or would not be reasonable to grant or withhold permission.
Why didn’t you tell them why you want a power point in a storage area and, seeing as you hadn’t told them, why didn’t they just ask rather than speculating about what you might be up to?
I am not sure for whichever state you are in but it is likely that the relevant strata legislation allows a committee member to enter a unit in certain tightly circumscribed situations. Examples might include:
-to investigate a suspected breach of rules after having given reasonable notice, or
-in an emergency, without notice. Eg. if water is gushing from a unit and threatening to do damage to another unit or the common property and the unit owner cannot be contacted.
If the owners really think the committee has done a great job in trying circumstances and gone above and beyond the call of duty, the appropriate thing would be for a non-committee member to propose a motion at the AGM to amend the proposed budget for the coming year to include a small honorarium for the outgoing committee.
Better might be a simple vote of thanks proposed from the floor.
Can the OC not find someone to chair who lives closer than 300km from the building!
Start with talking to him. Perhaps he thinks that doing it outdoors is dissipating the fumes and consequently not bothering anyone.
@Boronia said:
A quite popular window “treatment” in Sydney, in units with large glass areas, is aluminium foil. It would probably be much more noticeable from outside than bubble wrap. And probably more effective as a heat barrier.Foil against the glass would be effective for radiant heat, such as when sun shines directly in through a window. Foil does not do much for insulation without an air gap.
Bubble wrap is good for insulation against conducted heat, either to keep heat in in winter or to keep it out in summer.
Glass is quite a good conductor of heat so if the air is 20 degrees warmer on one side than the other of a sheet of glass that might be as little as 3mm thick, you will get a lot of heat move across. The pockets of trapped air in bubble wrap act like the narrow slab of trapped air between double glazing, and that air is a much poorer conductor of heat than the glass.
@gwyn said:
Our Strata Committee voted to adopt the Model By Laws at our AGM last year.I am guessing that perhaps the members at the AGM voted to adopt the Model By Laws, not just the committee. Since you have only 7 lots, it might happen to be that every member at the AGM was a committee member but at an AGM people vote as members of the Owners Corporation, not as committee members.
However a majority of the Committee now feel they wish to rescind the Model By Law Clause 8 entirely… There is only one of the owners who would not agree.
My question is: Is there any reason why a majority of Committee (or Owners?) should not be able to rescind that particular clause in the Model By Laws?
As others have said, you can rescind that particular clause but it has to be done by the owners, not the committee, at a properly convened general meeting. Since there are only seven of you, you could easily choose informally to turn a blind eye to harmless children’s play until a convenient time to have the meeting.
You might like to also think about whether there are other matters specific to your site that should be covered by an extra by-law or perhaps your previous by-laws had something specific and useful that was inadvertently thrown out. Then call a meeting to make the changes, but it does not sound urgent.
Once the changes have been made remember to register them.
I might have some sympathy for the tenant.
Bubblewrap is a cheap and effective way to get the insulation benefits of double glazing while being completely reversible – important for a tenant who may have few options to improve comfort and reduce energy costs. Perhaps it is only intended to be there for the worst of the hot weather, not permanently? If the unit is hot and there is either no air conditioning or the tenant is worried about the cost of running air conditioning, this might be a very reasonable thing to have done.
Is it possible to reach a compromise such as requiring it to come down after the worst of the hot weather or only insisting it be removed from the most visible window?
I can afford professional double glazing and have installed a mix of profession and DIY double glazing in my unit. However, I have just a sheet of bubble wrap laying across the top of the light diffusor of a skylight to improve its insulation – there was no need to spend more for no better performance.
Another option for the tenant is this product: https://www.clearcomfort.com.au I recommend it highly. It is almost as good as real double glazing for thermal performance at a tiny fraction of the price (does nothing for noise). I have some I installed over 20 years ago and it is still fine. There are ways to install it reversibly which would suit a tenant. From outside you would not be able to see any change. From inside the window is virtually as good optically as an untreated window.
@david2708 said:
…I intend to show & print out the budget and come up with a dollar figure per unit of entitlement for the Admin & Capital works accounts rather than a percentage increase in the Agenda notes…
Sneaky? …Not sneaky. It’s what I’d expect. In the ACT, I think the actual amount of levies for each unit has to be presented in the meeting papers. Certainly that is what we always have. The budget is always included in the meeting papers with the agenda and meeting notice. How else can people decide whether to vote for it?
The budget should show proposed expenditure for the year against various things as well as the levies that will be income. It has a bottom line that shows whether the balance is anticipated to stay exactly the same or go up or down. On occasions, as treasurer, I have proposed levies that are a bit more, a bit less or exactly the same as proposed expenditure for that year according to where our savings were up to.
Bylaws that prohibit clothes drying in the free, zero-emissions sun and wind are antiquated and reflect ridiculous and indefensible snobbery in my opinion. I would normally advise compliance with bylaws/rules/articles and following proper process to change such rules as appropriate, but with this, the short-term solution is civil disobedience.
In my view an OC could only defend such a rule if it provides practical convenient alternative facilities for air drying of clothes.
Many years ago our OC had a treasurer who seemed to think it was a virtue to keep levies low and only do the minimum of maintenance etc. A comfortable cash reserve was run down. The next treasurer proposed an increase of levies by 25% in one year, explained why and this was accepted as reasonable. Our levies were still lower than most.