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I would expect that the lot owners insurance would still pay up but I suggest that you put this question to your insurer for a definite answer. Perhaps you could also ask if your insurer would in turn pursue a claim against the Owners Corporation.
Another approach might be to find out what it would cost for automatically closing doors and card access so that the doors would automatically be locked without relying on residents to do the locking. Having done the research, you could put a motion to a general meeting to install that sort of closure to the doors. Unless you know someone on the executive committee is keen to do the research and push the issue, I suggest it would be more fruitful to do the work for them. Let them know your concern and offer to help. That way you don’t put them off-side by springing this on them fully formed but you also don’t annoy them by expecting them as busy volunteers to drop whatever they are doing now to do the work for your pet project.
Sounds like a good outcome. A shot across the bow delivered calmly seems to be having the right effect. Perhaps you gave other EC members the confidence to stand up to a domineering chair? Sometimes one person can be so headstrong and forceful that they have others cowed into submission. With luck there is a majority of the EC now more aware and confident in their role and emboldened by knowing they have support.
If you are operating the fire alarms in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions (IE a 10 year maintenance schedule due to the improved battery type) and document that, I doubt there is a problem.
He can’t appropriate part of your lot for his benefit without your approval.
Also, he would need the Owners Corporations approval for the alteration of his lot (erecting the granny flat). Owners Corporations vary in the level of approval required for erections and alterations and I am not up to speed with NSW, especially not the recent legislation changes, as I am in the ACT. Nonetheless, he simply can’t do it without an approval. Even if your executive committee has authority to approve erections and alterations, it now cannot approve since it would be contrary to the clear direction given by your last AGM decision to reject the decision.
It seems to me there is nothing further to be done. Having had the proposal considered and unanimously rejected at a general meeting makes his position very clear! He has no position.
If, in spite of all that, construction looks like it is about to occur might you go to the Tribunal and/or local council for a order to halt construction. I don’t think he could find a builder who would do the work without seeing that it is approved by the local planning authorities and they should not approve without seeing evidence that the Owners Corporation had approved.
I would relax. He can’t do anything and if he were to try, he could be easily stopped.
Your reasoning sounds OK to me. If the signing of the contract renewal was dated at the first meeting but the minutes also record the lack of a quorum and the deferral of the meeting, then that would seem unequivocally invalid to me. Do you have a previous valid contract with the managing agent that enables you to continue with them performing the routine matters while you sort out the validity of the renewal?
If all this was last year, presumably the agent has been managing for at least half a year. Perhaps they will have to be paid for that but a penalty for failing to observe proper process could be that they are only paid the continuing rate from the end of the last contract, not the possibly higher amount of the first year of the invalidly renewed contract.
An option to make the contract retrospectively valid would be to call a general meeting at which it is resolved with proper process to do what was previously done without proper process. An offer could be made in mediation to do that if the agent agreed to a discount.
One thing though. In the ACT, perhaps elsewhere – I’m not sure, a meeting that lacks a quorum can proceed with a ‘reduced quorum’ after waiting 30 minutes for stragglers to show up. Then, the minutes of the meeting must be distributed within 7 days with a notice pointing out that the reduced quorum meeting decisions can be overturned by a petition of 50% of owners if received within 30 days. So, just perhaps, there is a provision like this where you are and perhaps the decision was valid if the reduced quorum procedures were followed.
Good outcome. Often diplomatic persuasion is the best way, especially if you can show that you could sort it out formally if the person won’t be persuaded. IE. Tread softly but carry a big stick.
In the ACT, perhaps similar elsewhere, the Act has a provision that the Tribunal can give an order to give effect to a failed motion if opposition was unreasonable. Conversely it can declare a motion that passed to have failed if it was unreasonable for it to have passed. It decides the matter on what is known now and does not try to rule on whether any particular person was being unreasonable in voting as they did.
It could be that new facts have come to light so that the reasonable outcome would be different from what it was at the time the vote was taken. In effect, what you could ask of the Tribunal is for an administrative review.
If your vote being different would not have made any difference and there is no new information that might make others decide differently, then you probably just have to live with the OC’s decision. I would only go to the Tribunal or make representations to the committee to have them hold off until the matter is reconsidered if the decision would result in some serious injustice.
We had the mirror image situation here in the ACT. The committee wanted to keep a large tree that a unit owner was lobbying hard to remove.
First, find out if the tree is a ‘regulated’ tree (or similar term). In the ACT any tree over 12m or more than some particular girth is automatically a ‘regulated’ tree and permission to remove it is required from the local government. You might have something similar.
Any owner can put a motion on the agenda with enough notice. Put a motion that the tree not be removed unless local council permit it and two arborists say that it is unsafe in a way that cannot be remedied.
Alternatively, if removing the tree is only put as one item of the budget motion, round up people who will only pass the budget after an amendment to remove that line of the budget.
You could apply to your equivalent of the Civil and Administrative Tribunals of other states for an urgent stop order until the matter has been put to a general meeting with sufficient time for parties to gather the requisite information. My experience of the Tribunal in the ACT is that it is keen to seen matters such as this fully aired at a general meeting and opportunity given for the democratic process to decide the matter before it imposes a decision.
Would there be scope for a proposal for some shared common facility on that area that might make people perk up? Perhaps a shared BBQ and paving with some picnic tables?
Alternatively, the area could be granted to the ground floor unit owners with an increase in their unit entitlements and a consequent reduction in everyone else’s. That would mean they pay more levies and the rest pay less, though they would have greater voting rights too in a ‘poll vote’, assuming things work like that in WA.
If it were given away for nothing, a condition of the grant could be that the area be kept in good order with the OC retaining the right to require changes to the landscaping.
You would need to know what type of vote is required if the grant is formalised. In some states it is a special resolution but in the ACT an unopposed resolution is required to grant a ‘special privilege’ over common property. An alternative, if people agree, would be a less formal arrangement in which the OC resolves to allow furniture, gardening etc by the ground floor units on that area of common property subject to conditions including that those permissions can be revoked. All unit owners retain their right to use and enjoy the area, even if they would not in practice, and these permissions are not to be taken to be a grant of exclusive use. IE you might be able to find a way that allows it while still being reversible.
As for the balconies, reassure the unit owners that nobody has the right to enter their unit and nobody is likely to get up on their balcony with a ladder!
If you are just left with a box of records in a corner at the managing agent’s office, I can’t see that they have incurred much in the way of costs. I would write to the council/committee explaining that you did nothing that would cause the manager to have grounds for charging you and see what happens.
Depends where you are. In the ACT the EC code of conduct is part of the Act. Default rule require compliance with ACT law. So, you could go to the Tribunal seeking an order for compliance.
Elsewhere, if the code of conduct were adopted as a by-law, then you are probably in the same situation.
In any case, whatever behaviour is causing a breach of a code of conduct is probably bad enough that you could address that directly.
You could talk to neighbours and encourage them to vote for someone different at the next AGM.
You might be able to put a specific motion that refers to the inappropriate behaviour. Best to keep it civil, cool and unemotive.
Care to be more specific what the problem is?
A pragmatic and sufficiently formal middle ground is for an EC to make some easy decisions promptly by email if there is agreement among the EC members then later have a formal meeting with minutes that record any such decisions made ‘out of session’. That lets some simple matters be decided quickly but gets those decisions properly onto the formal record.
If the fence is restricting access to an area of common property then the OC can demand its removal. Indeed if it would prevent members of the OC from observing any hazard or other maintenance requirement on that patch of common property, the OC should insist on the fence being removed.
Our OC, a set of townhouses, had several instances of people having enclosed areas of common property adjacent to their units. Although nobody else would be likely to use those bits of common property except the adjacent unit owner and although the adjacent unit owner was permitted, even encouraged, to look after the garden in those areas, we (the executive committee at the time) nonetheless insisted on the fences being removed, first with a nice letter and later with a rules infringement notice when the nice letter was ignored.
Two of the units changed hands soon after and the new owners had been made aware of the situation during the sale process. The new owners removed the fences. In a third instance we went to the Tribunal and eventually the unit owner complied after some mediation and firm and difficult but friendly and polite discussion made it clear that they really did have to comply.
Another thing to check on is that the bill matches the actual readings on the meter. Locally where I am there has been quite a fuss lately with people getting anomalous bills for gas. It turns out that the utility has been sending some bills with ‘estimates’ rather than actual meter readings.
Some local councils offer energy audits on occasions either free or or at low cost. A person will review energy accounts and look at appliances, insulation, patterns of energy use and suggest things to reduce consumption.
Could it be that your kids are old enough to be at home when you are not and staying in the shower for ages? Heating water is a large consumer of energy, especially if you have a teenager who likes to shower!! Kids can do things like run the heater with the window open too!
A faulty pressure relief valve on the water heater letting a lot of water out intermittently would be a conceivable expensive fault.
Several years ago our OC’s management agreement with Independent Property Group was a standard (ACT) agreement with the SCA logo in the top left corner of the first page. The AGM noticed an asymmetry between ‘Termination by the OC’ and ‘Termination by the agent’ clauses: They did not have to give us as much notice as we had to give them. The AGM decided to appoint the manager subject to changing the required notice to being 28 days for both parties. The manager agreed to the change which was made by hand on the standard form and initialed. It was just a matter of crossing out the printed ’14’ and writing ’28’ instead with the change initialed on each copy.
Perhaps what the agent really means is that the agreement is only available to the managing agent electronically and locked down with only some flelds editable. If they are young they might not be aware of an old-fashioned but more flexible technology known as ‘hand-writing’. 😉