Ask your strata manager to give you a copy of the strata management contract if you don’t have it already. If it is a contract based on a template provided by Strata Community Association, you should look at Schedule A2 (which lists “Duties and Functions” and “Limitations on Authority”). This is where you find out how much money the strata manager is authorised to spend without telling the owners coporation (or even the strata committee).
I had the same experience with past strata managers. Expensive bills for simple jobs appeared on our quarterly cash management statement. It was too late for me to object to the expense because it was “done and dusted.”
The strata managers argue that it is a waste of time contacting the owner for every little repair. In my past management contracts, the strata manager stipulated that they can spend up to $500 without telling the strata committee. So they send a “work order” to a contractor with a “$500 limit”. Unsurprisingly, we are charged $490 or $495 for every job. Over the course of years, these repairs add up to a lot of money.
Then they had another condition which overrode the $500 limit if it was an “emergency”. The definition of “emergency” was when the owner called it an emergency. It did not have to be life threatening or leading imminent collapse of the building. It just had to be a cranky owner.
In a nutshell, the strata manager was free to spend the owners corp money without consulting the owners corp beforehand.