[LoveTheView]

I can see both sides of this argument.

As a Tassie owner, I’m curious about what the actual standard is that the locks must comply with. Is it a national standard or a state one? Does anyone have that link?

[LoveTheView]

Sorry Jimmy, that Act reference is from the NSW Act.  I have found nothing similar in the Tasmanian Act.  It is certainly a section that I will be recommending be included in the Act when the Tasmanian Government finally gets around to its long promised review of the Act.  The Tasmanian act is pretty basic!

Thankyou for everyone’s input.  I am now inclining to the view that @kaindub is correct, that we are unable to use BC funds to repair private Lot property.

As @Sir Humphrey has suggested, we do have the first three suggested by-laws relating to the owners’ responsibility to maintain their property in good repair.  However our only useful Act reference is that the BC’s functions include “to carry out other functions for the benefit of the owners”.  So I believe we will have to go down the route of a SGM to give permission to the BC to undertake the building wide project for the benefit of all owners and to provide approval for a means of distribution of the costs (probably in line with unit entitlements).

This will not be fun.

 

[LoveTheView]

Hi all, I posted this in the Living in Tasmanian Strata forum, so I assumed you would realise this is about Tasmania.

The rules about boundaries are different here.  We were surprised recently when we found out how different they are to NSW etc.  Here, where there is a bold boundary line, the individual owns to halfway through the line if there is an adjacent Lot or common property, and if there is no adjacent Lot or common property then the individual owns to the actual outside.  As you can imagine, this is going to create a number of complex problems for the Body Corporate to work through or around.

That is why we had the idea of using the Sinking Fund.  In fact, we currently have balconies included in our Asset Maintenance plan because we were unaware at our last AGM about the correct definition of our boundaries.   Could we continue to hold some items (like balconies) in the scope of the Sinking Fund?

 

 

 

[LoveTheView]

Thanks all.  Just to round this off, our strata manager did not know what to do (not helpful).  And we don’t have a facilities manager, sadly.  So the management committee sent a polite email to the owner, letting them know what seemed to be proposed, what aspects the committee had concerns about, and asking if the owner was supportive.  It turned out the owner had no idea, and contacted the letting agent to stop the whole thing.  The agent then indicated in an immediate email that there had not been an approach by the tenant after all.

Thankyou @kaindub for clarifying the situation with certified tradespeople, that is helpful. Although one can’t help being nervous that some owner does something illegal, that no-one gets to hear about, until something goes wrong and the BC has to solve a problem.

[LoveTheView]

Kaindub’s advice is excellent, and enlightening – I will note this for future issues. It sounds like this committee needs a shakeup.

I have a Vegepod on my balcony, also a couple of FoodCubes which I have at times netted against birds.  Another resident had one for a while too.  Absolutely no problem in our building, in fact our body corporate supports community vegie beds on our rooftop, and one of these sports a netting enclosure.  We encourage residents to “grow their own’ and add greenery to the environment.

 

 

[LoveTheView]

Beaut!!! Thankyou.

[LoveTheView]

As a followup on this post, @jimmyt53, I wonder if it is worth creating a subforum here for Strata Living in Tasmania.  Our Act and accepted practices are a bit different to those in other States, and it might be useful for Taswegians to have a separate place for discussions.    We are setting up our own online forum but current FlatChat subscribers might appreciate a spot on this forum.

TIA.

[LoveTheView]

It’s the Name – Strata Community Association – which is totally misleading.  The organisation should be called Strata Managers Association.

[LoveTheView]

In our community of 30 apts and 2 retail tenancies, our founding vision was for intentional community i.e. we would be good neighbours to each other and work collaboratively together.  Luckily we attracted a number of owners who are committed to both this vision and to effective communication.  We set up a Slack forum even during the build stage so that we could share info and concerns.  We ask owners and tenants if they want to be in it, and they supply their email addresses for that.  It was quite disappointing when Slack changed their business model and now (unless we pay an exorbitant amount for a bigger plan) our exchanges “time out” at three months old.  Once we moved in we started producing and distributing regular community newsletters as well.

This year the management committee drafted a comms plan so that we could see where our communication gaps were.  As people have widely varying needs and styles of communication, we wanted to make sure we had enough “channels” to reach most people with most messages, and also that we were safely storing information for future reference.

This is all driven by active owners, as the strata manager keeps only the official and financial records and issues only terse legalistic messages.  They are also subject to staffing changes, and the corporate memory is lost with every replacement.

[LoveTheView]

nixjet wrote:

The best we can do as active strata owners is ensure we have by-laws/rules in place to ensure residents are aware of their obligations that any equipment they bring into the complex complies with relevant Australian standards whether its gas bbq’s, lighting, lamps, tv, any sort of charger or battery. Owners corporations would probably be well advised to undertake a “test and tag” activity to identify all component plugged into outlets on common property is identified.

Yes, this may well be the way we will move – i.e. highlighting individual responsibility.

Advice now received from Tasmania’s CBOS department indicates that the hazard of runaway fire arising from clustering lithium batteries may be greater than the hazard of a single localised fire in one apartment.

I’m not sure what the additional cost of “test and tag”ging for privately owned equipment in common areas would amount to.

 

[LoveTheView]

We have parking for only two cars, and it is a requirement that they be electric.  Our EV carshare program involves two battery EVs and they take those two places.  We have a 7/22kW AC charger which is adequate for the two cars, and a number of 15V outlets for e-bikes and e-scooters.

[LoveTheView]

I think it’s a bit risky making training an entry requirement – it could lead to monopolisation of the committee by people who have done a course but have barrows to push or personalities not suited to working collaboratively in a team.  But I think it should be encouraged, especially for committee members going on for a second year or more. And the training cost should be covered.

The next step to consider would be an annual allowance once the training is under the belt.   That said, I don’t know what training would be available here in Tasmania.

[LoveTheView]

Tks Sir Humphrey, glad you like the look of the lithium battery proposal.

Re the other issues, we are very lucky that our developer had the vision to set up our building for sustainable transport.  A fast AC charger was installed (7/22kW) and a number of 15A power outlets are available for e-bikes and e-scooters.  The electricity supply is fine.

Re security – our basement garage is locked, resident access only, and we have installed security cameras recently as well.  We also advise all residents to lock their vehicles securely to the rails supplied, and to use good quality locks.  If someone does slip in, the bikes and scooters are still pretty vulnerable.

[LoveTheView]

We set up a Slack forum, which is structured with a number of Channels (which are like Folders) to help organise the discussions.  We were hoping that this would provide a community library of useful documents and information as well as a social chat forum.  Sadly, Slack introduced a new business model and the free version now only shows items up to three months old.  As time flies (!) information that has been shared disappears quite quickly, and the community information source aspect is basically gone.

The cost for ongoing viewing of all posts in the Slack forum is more than our Committee wants to consider (several thousand $$ pa).  We looked at a few alternatives, but they were also pricey.  We looked hard at WhatsApp but decided not to go that way either (one big reason is that someone entering the group new cannot see any previously shared documents, so the information library feature doesn’t quite work).

Now we are looking at storing relatively less private and sensitive documents in Google Drive and sharing that link to all residents and owners. Critical, private and sensitive documents will still be held by the Secretary and our strata manager.

[LoveTheView]

This is excellent news.  For those who do not agree, I suggest you read “The Big Switch” by Saul Griffith.  We need to transform our infrastructure, update our grid and adapt our households.  So it is essential to move residences away from fossil fuelled heating and cooking as fast as possible.  It’s a no-brainer to commit to this for new builds.

[Author]

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