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@Topsheila said:
SirHumphrey – I suspect knocking on doors would only antagonise people. You know, the usual – “why are you making a fuss”? And I doubt anyone would still have an envelope.I think it would be helpful to at least have a few instances of people not getting their notice. Otherwise, who is to say that only your notice went missing? It’s easy to blame Australia Post for one missing notice but not several.
Similarly, several people supporting action at the Tribunal is better for you, both so that you have personal support and to strengthen your case so you don’t appear as just one isolated disgruntled person.
I think in NSW one week of notice of the AGM is required (Seems very little to me. In the ACT it is 2 weeks or 3 weeks if there are motions for unopposed or unanimous resolutions to be put). However, to calculate the correct timetable for giving notices, reference has to be made to the Interpretations Act 1987 (NSW). When sent by post in Australia, notices are deemed to be received on the 4th working day after the letter is posted. Weekends and public holidays are not working days.
So, if posted on Monday 13th as claimed, the mail would be deemed to have been received on Friday 17th. Add a week and that makes Monday 27th the earliest possible date for the meeting. I think it might be within the letter of the law but it is extremely poor form to deliberately give only the minimum notice, unless there is some urgent decision needed as soon as can possibly be arranged.
Now that more than a further week has elapsed and you and perhaps others have not received the notice that was supposedly posted, I would start knocking on doors and collecting dated signatures from people who say they did not receive their notice. Your document could also allow for people to state when they did receive their notice, and if they did, whether the envelope was date stamped and, if so, what that date was if they still have the envelope. You might be able to prove that the manager and chair have lied about proper notice.
I think the fist stage is to…
Better to avoid ‘the fist stage’ if you can. 😉
More seriously, I would point out that secure bike storage is a useful facility that many OCs wish they had and perhaps the use of part of the room for that purpose should be formalised, or at least not discouraged. Plenty of younger people might also be discouraged from cycling if they had to carry their bikes up a few flights of stairs.
If you were in the ACT, you could even call a bike rack in part of the room ‘sustainability infrastructure’ (makes low emissions transport easier) and approve this with an ordinary resolution pursuant to s.23 of the Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011.
So, it’s the 28th now. Did you have this irregular AGM last night and, if so, did you attend and what was purported to have been decided?
Until a few years ago we paid only $100 to hire a room at a local club for meetings. A few people bought drinks for themselves. Recently the club bumped up the price to several hundred dollars and also made purchase of minimum amount of food and drink a condition of room hire. We would have been hard-pressed to spend less than $500.
Last year we approached a local bar which was normally closed on a particular week night. The opened for free and we (the committee) agreed to spend about $250 on their rather nice selection of bar snacks that the OC would otherwise have paid for room hire. People bought their own drinks. The snacks were passed around and popular. We had hoped that we would spend no more than we would have needed to spend at the club but create a more pleasant atmosphere.
I would say it was a partial success but I think the bar owner will be less keen to repeat it. I do not think we spent enough to make it worthwhile for him to open up.
It might be that your committee has experienced the same trend and they were actually about as economical as they could be. Perhaps you could ask? If they relate an experience like mine, perhaps suggest that they could make it more explicit in the meeting notice that they are hoping to create a more welcoming environment to encourage more owners to attend the AGM and that the room is about as cheap as they could manage to hire.
BTW. When you say ‘all general meetings are held in this room’, do you mean just the Annual General Meeting or do you have more frequent general meetings or do you actually mean the committee meetings? Being a bit posher in a bigger room for the AGM could be reasonable. Committee meetings could be in committee members units. When I have been on our committee, we have always met in committee members’ units, whoever was willing to host but generally not those committee members with a partner trying to get children to bed at the same time. For committee meetings, quite often somebody would bring some wine and/or snacks to share. This was not charged to the owners corporation.
@madamme said:
can the decision to lodge a claim be done by one person alone without consultation with the others – eg strata manager, secretary or lot owner?The insurance is held by the owners corporation so it is only the OC that can make a claim. The committee exercises the functions of the OC, so generally the committee makes the decision to make a claim, though in principle a general meeting of the OC could make the decision. In practice, the committee would usually direct the manager to make the claim on behalf of the OC.
By the way, the advice veered off into discussion of claiming against the OC’s liability insurance but we don’t know what the Tribunal matter is about. Perhaps more useful advice could be given if we knew more about the matter.
I think JT is right. The OC would defend an action out of its own money. Insurance is unlikely to cover that. If the OC were found liable for something, the liability insurance is to cover what the OC might have to pay to another party.
Ideally, the OC would have some contingency funds up its sleeve. The committee could at least initially get some legal advice about the matter which might not cost so much.
In the ACT, which I am more familiar with, the committee can spend a certain amount on legal action before needing to put the matter to a general meeting.
In the ACT, Tribunal matters generally start with a directions hearing which can give consent orders or orders that the matter go to a hearing. Parties are advised to come to some mutually agreeable solution which can be made binding by the consent orders. Parties are warned that if the matter goes to a hearing the orders given there might not be to either party’s liking.
I recall the first time I was on our committee and an owner took us to the Tribunal it was quite scary and we didn’t really know what to expect. Now we have been to the Tribunal about half a dozen times over various matters over the last 6 years, we have found the process generally quite reasonable and almost straight-forward. We were legally represented in one matter that was too important to leave to amateurs such as myself but the rest were manageable by intelligent non-lawyers on the committee. A lot of work to get everything just right though!
The committee should advise the insurer if there is a risk that it might be found liable for something, even if it thinks the other party’s action is likely to fail.
I agree with JT. I had suggested that you could get an order from the Tribunal to cancel the meeting due to irregularity but given the time-frame, I prefer JT’s advice. See if it goes ahead, document the multitude of errors and in your own time, with some allies, get an order from the Tribunal to render the whole lot null and void and of no effect.
All I would do tomorrow morning is phone the strata manager to let them know that if this goes ahead on their watch it will be very embarrassing for their business. The strata manager might turn out to be an unexpected ally. They might have been trying to give good advice but done as they were instructed by the committee and hoped to wash their hands of it. If they see that things are about to hit the fan, they might be more insistent about their advice to the committee.
In the olden days you might have chosen that moment to hurl the contents of your bedpan out into the street!
Seriously though, is the grass part of the strata common property or public land? If it is common property, the owners corp might be able to put up a low fence to delineate it as private. It could be as little as 30cm high and the sort of garden bed border edging that just pushes into the soil and costs little. Your dog walker would have to be bold to lift the dog over.
I am in the ACT, not NSW so I am not familiar with the minutiae of NSW procedure. However, it seems likely to me that the meeting has not been validly notified. If you have people who are not computer literate it seems likely that they can only be validly notified of a meeting by ordinary post.
In the ACT a minimum of two weeks notice must be given. That 2 weeks is from the date a person is deemed to have received the notice. In practice that means adding a week to the notice period to allow for postage. There are legal precedents on that.
Other things in the ACT require EC approval such as the voting form, so it is not possible to put a valid meeting notice together without a resolution of the EC to approve the form. What does NSW require of an EC before you can call a meeting? If you have not had a meeting, I suspect there will be some procedural matter that has not been attended to.
Surely the NSW Act has something to say about how committee members are elected by the OC! The committee can’t just decide that only the committee can nominate. Perhaps arrange to test this by having someone write to the committee to indicate their intention to nominate you.
On occasions like this, insisting on pedantic adherence to rules will be your friend. There are times when all is going well that you can be pragmatically a bit more relaxed but this does not look like an occasion for that.
Consider documenting the flaws of process and then making an application to the Tribunal for an order to cancel the meeting on the grounds of irregularity. That will show you are not to be messed with and force proper adherence to the Act on matters of notice of the meeting date, agenda and motions including for committee appointment.
It might be that the committee agenda means what it says. Perhaps the committee has yet to discuss whether anyone on the committee is aware of anyone who might like to be nominated or whether the committee wants to fill the position at all. They might, after some discussion, decide that the remaining members can do all that is required till the AGM. Or perhaps someone will suggest putting out a notice to all owners asking anyone interested to put up their hand.
If the AGM is likely to be in May, then it would seem reasonable for the remaining committee to just decide to carry on till then. There would not be much time for a newbie to get up to speed and do anything useful it would seem.
Not sure about NSW but in the ACT the remaining members of an EC can appoint someone to fill a casual vacancy until the next AGM.
I would follow Ms Penelope’s advice. Look around, check, be sensible and probably just do it but be prepared to take it back in if people complain.
Restrictions on the EC taking legal action are similar in the ACT. Nonetheless our EC has taken legal action several times since the estimated cost was below the threshold that triggers the requirement for general meeting approval.
Yes, tenants could complicate but if the unit might be more attractive to tenants if the electricity is cheaper or the owner might be able to charge more for a unit with lower utility costs.