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But Jimmy, there shouldn't be any such thing as a “casting” vote given to the chair anyway…
From 8(2) of Schedule 3 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 1996:
“The chairperson does not have a casting vote in relation to any motion but may vote in his or her own right as a member of the executive committee.”
So it should be one committee member, one vote, no casting votes.
Possibly Multiple Occupancy?
What is majority? – My understanding is that in an EC, it is one vote per member (including all office bearers), there is no casting vote. So if you had an EC of 8, and there was a meeting with just 4 present, the 3 votes could come from any of those four present, which yes could be the Chair + Secretary + Treasurer (if they were three of the four present).
With the quotes, I believe in most cases a strata manager can only approve a quote and hence work to commence for emergency repairs, which I do not expect your window repairs would be. Most work quotes have to go through the executive committee, so if your strata manager has obtained quotes (which obviously you don't know yet), perhaps your executive committee hasn't approved them, either by not being able to reach an agreement, believing the quotes are too high, or not believing the work is required at this time.
Separately, with regards to the window locks, my understanding is also that they would be lot property, as opposed to common property. I guess there may be an exception where they are fully part of the window / window frame and were marked as common property when the strata plan was registered, but I don't know how common this is (or whether this is possible at all).
I thought similarly to Jimmy, in that since the unit entitlement are based relatively within the strata, if changes such as balcony additions were going to benefit some units (area and value wise) and not others, a review of unit entitlements would be in order. And it would be expected that the increased units took up a larger share than previously (and hence other lots a slightly lesser share). At least, in my building, if some units were adding balconies and others not, I would be making it clear that I expected the unit entitlements to be reviewed by an appropriately qualified person.
That said, if all units in the strata plan had similar enough balconies added, it may not be required, as it would affect everyone approximately equally, so the previous unit entitlements are likely to still be fair.
Special Levies are split according to unit entitlements, just as normal levies are. We have had a couple of these in the past few years in our block.