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So what is the issue and how would you like it to be different? By ‘amendment’ do you mean a subtle tweak to the proposal or do you mean change it to something substantially different? If the former, you can propose an amendment from the floor at the AGM.
Amendments are OK and would be allowed at the meeting if they are sufficiently minor. EG. you can’t have an amendment to insert the word ‘not’ and completely negate the intent of the proposal. On the other hand you can move an amendment that does not substantially alter the intent and effect of the motion (IE minor tweaks). For example, let’s say there is a motion to declare the driveway a no stopping zone. Perhaps what was really meant was a no standing zone if the issue is people who park and block the driveway for hours at a time, not people briefly stopping to let out a passenger. Then an amendment to change ‘stopping’ for ‘standing’ would be OK.
In all such things it is generally better to talk to the EC and others before the meeting.
I would think the OC is obliged to meet the cost of putting it back to standard, not as modified. IE the OC would have to reinstate the inner wall and remove all the extraneous stuff from the balcony. If the owner wanted to have the balcony enclosed, and the OC approves the modification, fixing it to a safe standard of reasonable appearance would be a cost to the unit owner.
Do you need the owner’s permission to reverse a special privilege? In the ACT (which might well be different) it requires a special resolution to rescind a special privilege over common property with no mention of needing agreement from the owner with the special privilege.
@JimmyT said:
… And far from visible washing being a sign of social disintegration, the balcony by-law breaches are just as likely to be a sign of environmentally aware and socially responsible members of the cappuccino-sipping set…
That would be the ‘Fair Trade’ flat white-sipping set (with whom I am happy to be associated!)
The only thing I can think of that might be useful here would be a general bylaw that specified what people should do when renovating. Perhaps, off the top of my head, that the EC be notified when renovations are planned, something about tradespeople with access to the common property, reasonable limits on disturbance to other residents and some sort of statement to be given about any potential impact on common property-say plumbing connections or whatever. I can think the OC might have an interest in various ways in renovations but they would all be about the conduct at the time and general to any renovations rather than specific to each one requiring a new by-law.
Peter.
It makes a huge difference if the spaces are common property or part of the unit on the unit plan. If common property you might have a special privilege for exclusive use of that space and it might have been granted in exchange for the unit owner taking on maintenance eg. cleaning. I am especially conscious of this because in the ACT it takes an unopposed resolution to grant a special privilege over common property. We had such an arrangement for parking spaces. It was not done properly years ago. We have legal advice that it needs urgent fixing. We took further advice on how to fix it, explained to owners etc. Still a few opposed because they did not accept it was not done right in the first place. This has cost us serious money already, mostly due to the need to deal legally with a few intransigent owners. Tomorrow is the big day of the hearing.
The best thing though is you have a power point metered back to your unit in each space. Great! You are set up for electric cars. I can only charge mine because a neighbour let me run a subsidiary meter in his meter box so I can charge from his unit and pay for the extra on his meter.
When I am not being a ‘strataguru’ I am a being consulted on DIY conversion of cars to electric drive. My EV has been on the road for over 3 years now. Going great.
It really comes down to how the EC wants to work with the strata manager. The EC has the final responsibility but could direct things to go this way. I can see merit in that, paper trails and a filter for the subset of owners who can communicate a bit too much.
However, our EC goes the other way. We want to hear what is happening and decide whether to deal with it ourselves or direct the manager to address the issue a particular way.
The EC should be clear on who is boss and who is a service provider. The tail should not wag the dog.
A perennial difficulty we have is finding reasonable trades people to do jobs that are less than a builder would be interested in but a bit involved or complex for an ordinary handyman.
It is normal that hot water systems are set to >60 degrees to ensure no growth of bacteria but it is also a requirement in any new installation that a tempering valve be installed to protect against risk of scalding, at least in bathrooms. IE safety requires both the higher tank temperature and the tempering valve.
On another matter unrelated to plumbing we had legal advice that included the penalties that might be faced by the OC for exposing someone to risk of serious harm. IE nothing bad needed to actually occur. It was enough to be liable if we did not remedy a serious safety risk.
It seems bizarre that the OC has a problem with such a routine matter. I would think the only technical matter to address is whether it would be better to have one tempering valve for the entire system or separate ones at the entry point of each unit or just on the bathroom of each unit. The last option can be useful to have hotter water in the kitchen for washing up.
I think there would usually be a point at which you could shut off the water just for your unit and a point at which the pipes inside the unit become your responsibility. Is is possible to install a tempering valve on a bit of pipe that is your responsibility and feeds the shower?
Of course I was not there. I cannot know if these residents were entirely reasonable or louder than they thought. Having said that, I am all too familiar with the letter from an owner who speaks in the plural on behalf of ‘many concerned residents’ while actually only speaking for herself. It is a common affectation to assume the mantle of speaking for all the right-thinking people in the development. I find it quite plausible that CBR has encountered a ‘noise nazi’. While it is true that a tenant is bound by the same Rules (ACT-speak for By-laws) as owners, enforcing those Rules would require an EC to be prepared to take the matter seriously enough to issue a Breach Notice and then be prepared to further act to take the matter to the ACAT (ACT equivalent of CTTT) if they thought you had failed to act on the notice by not ceasing to disturb other residents. Then it would go to a mediated ‘preliminary conference’ before going further. If the police had attended more than once and found a riotous party going on there would be a case to make. If, as CBR says, the police were called several times but found nothing unreasonable there is no case and some evidence that there is no case to be made and the breach notice is unreasonable. I would take note of the days on which the police found nothing going on.
Our managing agent recently advised that they were advising all their customers to sign up to a service from Ebix Trades Monitor. The cost was $73/year (+GST) to check that any contractors we have working on common property have an ABN, licence/registration and insurance. The letter recommending this from our managing agents said “Under the various OH&S Acts and Regulations fines of up to $1.2 million and/or 5 years in jail apply for certain breaches. These fines are not covered by your insurance and are borne by owners and committee members directly.”
@MATHO said:
…Have they a right to force this upon him and has my son any options / recourse at all?Thanks for any advice / help.
Well, 4/6 is not 75%. There is one other owner who would have to be on-side for the work to go ahead. I would be speaking with that other owner. Perhaps the works would increase the value of your son’s investment and be of benefit to him but it is not reasonable or affordable to do the works all in one big hit in one year even though that is what the 4/6 owner would like to do. Since the works might be desirable but not essential it would seem reasonable to save up for them.
Do the NSW strata laws have a ‘special purpose fund’ as an option along side the admin and sinking funds? I am a treasurer in ACT. We recently established a special purpose fund, distinct from our sinking fund, into which we will contribute for the next several years a smaller amount until we have enough for some worthwhile but non-urgent improvements. That way the levies do not increase too drastically for anyone but the money is quarantined away for this purpose.
Finally, there are legal concepts of ‘oppressing’ or ‘defrauding the minority’. It might comply with the statute for the owners of the other 5 units to vote to have a very large levy increase in one year but it would be unfair to impose this on the minority owner and such decisions can be overturned on those grounds.
@JimmyT said:
I should know by now that every time I tell myself I shouldn’t make assumptions I’m about to find out exactly why that’s the case.
You could add another two zeroes to the case I was talking about but the principles are the same – people misusing the law to beat their neighbours into submission.
And good luck getting your story in the papers! It’s taken me ten years to get past the “nobody cares” attitude of news desks to strata … and even then it’s a struggle.$10,000 was the amount anticipated in our recently passed budget to deal with a few owners who would not accept a negotiated solution to a serious problem that the vast majority of our owners were happy with.
Unrelated, but when the ACT had important and valuable changes to its Unit Titles legislation last year (passed unanimously by Liberal, Labor and Greens members) all the evening news was about some other sensationalist stuff I have already forgotten.
@Unexpected Leigh said:
…Our Annual General Meeting is coming up in a week and on the agenda is an item to chuck out our standard by-laws and vote in a whole set of new ones which are all set out on a solicitor’s letterhead … no one on the Executive Committee nor the strata manager is taking ownership for this odd plan…That is the bit that sounds odd to me. I think we need an overhaul in our OC but to get such an overhaul passed I would expect to first convince other EC members and then for the EC to explain the need, consult, advise etc. If we did not do all that I can’t see how we would get the numbers to pass the required motion. It would seem odd that someone might have paid for legal advice on their own and then not promote it proudly. If it is legal advice obtained by the EC, why are they not explaining why this was necessary, or at least a good idea?
Jargon may differ between states (I’m in the ACT) but assuming things are to here, there are two ways a unit might have exclusive use: 1) before the unit plan is registered these parking spaces might have been designated as ‘unit subsidiaries’ in which case they are part of the title of the relevant units. 2) After the plan was registered a ‘special privilege’ may have been granted to some units for use of these areas of common property. They can be circumscribed in various ways by the resolution of the general meeting that granted the special privilege. EG. Exclusive use of the space may have been granted for the purpose of parking a vehicle but not for other purposes such as general storage. There might be conditions such as access by other owners if necessary for maintenance of the common property or to address a safety issue. The special privilege may or may not have been validly granted. In the ACT it used to require a unanimous resolution but now requires an unopposed resolution. I think NSW is easier with a special resolution required.
So, it will either be clear on the registered plan or it will be clear from a valid resolution of a general meeting, or it won’t have been done right.
In our unit plan we have an on-going issue because past ECs had granted special privileges over parking spaces at various times in the past 30 years believing they had the authority to do so. This was recently challenged and our legal advice was that the EC did not have this power and never could have had this power because the relevant Act has always required special privileges to be granted by general meetings. The OC could not delegate this authority when the Act specifies a particular resolution of a general meeting being required. Sorting out the mess and getting all the parking onto a sound legal footing is getting expensive because just a few owners do not accept our legal advice and (in the ACT) an unopposed resolution is required to properly grant the special privileges to reinstate what we thought was the status quo.