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There are more restrictions on the election of owners to strata committees than most people realise. And the process of the election, as set out in Section 9 of the Regulations, is probably ignored more often than it is strictly adhered to.
That process is that you call for nominations, then take a vote on how many places you want on the committee (to a maximum of nine). That is where you could force an election to exclude deadbeats.
If you have, say, seven nominees and two of them are deadbeats, you propose a committee of five and then invite all the nominees to explain what they would bring to the committee and/or what they have done in the year in which they served.
If you don’t warn the deadbeats this is what you plan to do, they will be well and truly blind-sided while the keener candidates will, pre-warned and prepared, look like shining stars.
There are also specific restrictions on who can and can’t be nominated for election, as spelled out in section 31 and section 32 of the Strata Schemes Management Act (2015):
For instance, owners can only nominate one candidate for election. That means if they self-nominate they can’t nominate anyone else.
Co-owners can’t self-nominate … they either have to have a nomination in writing from their co-owners or get someone else to nominate them.
You can’t have more than one committee member from the same lot unless they also own another lot in the building.
Owners who were unfinancial at the time the meeting was called – i.e. haven’t paid their levies in full – can’t be nominated unless they have cleared their debt before the meeting (many strata managers want to see the money in the bank and won’t accept cheques at the meeting).
Non-owners can be nominated but not by owners who are also standing for election.
Also, unless they are owners in the block, building managers, rental agents of properties in the block can’t be elected.
Non-owners connected with the developer, the building manager or rental agents operating in the block can’t be elected to the committee unless they declare their connection before the election.