Re: Do votes against renovations need to be “reasonable”?

Sir Humphrey, What you describe sounds logical, but our committee doesn’t have authority to approve an alteration that requires a special by-law.  And don’t have authority to approve on behalf of the Owners Corp. 

We have had trouble in the past with the committee approving something that we already had a general bylaw covering, on condition the requirements of the bylaw were met. The owner went ahead and built the addition and when the requirements weren’t met it became very difficult to deal with the situation and impossible to rectify without asking the owner to remove the addition (which the committee were unwilling to do). So both the committee and the Strata Manager are wary of getting caught like that again. I’m assuming that is one reason our Strata Manager has insisted we do it in this order.  It means we can ask for documents showing that they have met the DA, have a structural engineers report, have a builder with a license and insurance….. etc, before we give any approval. And what is required can’t be misunderstood.

At this point it looks like there will be legitimate reasons the owner has not addressed that will result in a vote against her by-law, so my concern that there will be votes against her for the wrong reasons is probably irrelevant.

Whichever order we do it, your suggestion of going back and forth a few times informally until the owner presents a proposal that is likely to be approved or approvable is a good one.  Unfortunately this owner is in a great hurry for some reason and is not listening to me about possible impacts on others properties that I can see, let alone asking any others. She is throwing herself into getting everything she needs for the DA and trying to get us to organise a date for a general meeting to vote on the by law (which is pointless at this stage).

The committee have to give her permission to apply for a DA so I suppose we will have a chance to tell her some concerns that those on the committee can see. And if, as they claim, Hornsby Council require a DA (as opposed to a CDC) partly to ensure the impacts on her neighbours are considered, that may force the owner to look into them before she gets to the special resolution vote for her bylaw, at an Extra General Meeting she will have had to pay the fees for. Otherwise she potentially will be turned down by an owners vote right at the end of the process after all the effort and cost.