Cappy – your Strata Manager is right, and so is Peter about tighter controls on the majority of the Executive Committee (which is what you’re after) having the potential to paralyse your Owners Corporation’s (O/C) decision making process.
One way forward is to cautiously exercise the compulsory Motion on the Agenda for each Annual General Meeting where those present can elect to have decisions on certain items or types of matters determined only by the O/C (and not its Executive Committee) at a General Meeting.
That process, if properly considered and then passed by a majority, would enable whatever degree of control that is conservatively deemed necessary to be implemented, but again a word of caution about the potential for the resultant General Meetings that may result giving rise to both paralysis of the O/C’s decision making process and indifference by Owners.
A further option to achieve better control is to insist that the approved annual budgets list as many items (accounts) and associated expenditures as are necessary and anticipated, and avoid generic / catch-all items such as “general repairs” and “plumbing” maintenance”. As an example in our Plan, the historic admin. budget for “grounds maintenance” into which a plethora of expenditures was historically dumped, was replaced with “lawn maintenance”, “garden maintenance”, “cleaning”, and “maintenance of shared facilities”.