› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Finance, budgeting and loans › Strata’s financial statements withheld from OC › Current Page
Good morning Kaindub,
Thanks for the reply.
1. “Strata Education”
The committee member in question has been in his position for over 20 years. He is a very knowledgeable solicitor. The only possible explanation I can come up with why I see this expense for the first time is that his employer is no longer paying for this subscription, hence he is billing the OC. Until we hired a managing agent, he ran the strata for many years on his own, without billing the OC for such “education”.
As to the only other SC member, in case you may think the “professional education” is for her benefit, please note that she takes no part in managing the strata, she is quite senior and has no interest in matters such as “professional education”. Whenever any owner has I a query, small or large, she always refers them to the agent who often consults the solicitor.
But I will take your suggestion about asking nicely for access to all the resources paid for by the OC. Let’s see how he responds. I mean, how the agent responds as the SC member, as mentioned already, doesn’t want to be bothered by owners.
2. Strata Maintenance
As to the SC member billing and being paid by the OC for “maintenance”, you wrote: IMHO if he won the job on a competitive tender and had the necessary qualifications and was approved by the committee then i see that its a benefit for the OC to pay them for the work.
Please note: he did not provide a quote to the owners; neither he nor the agent sought tenders; neither the SC member nor the agent informed the owners that he was going to do work; he did not provide the owners with an invoice, presumably he just provided it to the agent who paid him; neither the SC member nor the agent inform the OC of when what I consider is an “irregular” payment was made. Had I not asked for certain financial reports, I would not now know he was paid 6 months ago.
Who knows how much he was paid over time in secret?
Do understand that my concern is not that work was done. It most probably had to have been done, but in the absence of quotes from the SC member, the absence of a competitive tender and secrecy of the agent and the SC member of concealing this “irregular” payment(s), the OC is poorly served. Unsurprisingly, transparency in the financial relationships of committee members was what I always pushed for when I was on the EC (back in the day), before I was pushed out of the EC.