› Flat Chat Strata Forum › The Professionals › EGM – By telephone – is this valid?? › Current Page
Gees, lots of question there!
Perhaps I should respond to the most important one first, and then explain why.
In my opinion the EGM is not properly constituted because:
1) It’s doublful that even in 2014 ‘electroic meetings’ are legal. Even though that’s an excellent means to encourage participation and I employ on-line voting for General Meetings of our O/C, I’m of the opinion that a quorum must first be achieved at the physical location for the Meeting by those ‘present’ both personally and by proxy and entitled to vote. So even if the Secretary has “farmed” a whole lot of proxies with the assistance of your Strata Manager, she would still have to BE THERE in order to exercise those to achieve a quorum.
2) On the subject of “proxy farming”, whilst it’s not illegal (yet) if your Strata Manager has directed Owners to grant their proxies to the Secretary as opposed to just sending the papers to her, then to be kind that’s naughty, and if they’ve actually written the Secretary’s name or position name on the prescribed Form before sending it out to Owners then that’s illegal.
3) The Secretary was legally nominated and elected as a Member of the E/C, but if the other three nominated themselves (as opposed to nominating each other), then that too is illegal, as strictly speaking is their subsequent “vote” to appoint themselves because that should have occurred (and been Minuted) at the E/C Meeting following the conclusion of the AGM.
So in my opinion an EGM convened and proposed to be held as you describe would be illegal unless item (1) is complied with, and whilst I can’t comment definatively on the other items because I don’t know the finer details, the best means to “call it off” would be for you or a like-minded Owner to advise the Secretary that you want to attend the Meeting personally. Then, armed with sufficient proxies from all those like-minded “workers” who don’t want the Strata Manager to be reappointed and/or other matters to be resolved at the Thursday Meeting by the means proposed, move a Motion to adjourn the Meeting and then use the proxies to pass it.
If it’s too late for you to coordinate that approach, then you and/or the others who couldn’t attend the Meeting could apply for Sect 153 Orders to have all Resolutions invalidated on the grounds that the procedures of the Strata Schemes Management Act were not complied with, and that those Resolutions would have been determined differently if those procedures were followed.
Maybe let your Strata Manager know about a possible Application for Orders if they’re less than forthcoming with a venue or if you can’t get the numbes between now and Thursday.