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Jef – Dave’s comments are absolutely correct!
What your previous Strata Managers have been doing for 30 years is contrary to the provisions of Sect 78(2) of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act (SCMA) and possibly under a strict interpretation of the NSW Water Act 2012 where water cannot be on-sold or even cost recovered without a Retail Licence.
It would appear that in order to both perpetuate what’s occurred historically and cover themselves for breaches of the SCMA , the new Strata Managers are pressing your Owners Corporation (O/C) to specially resolve to create and register an enabling Special By-Law and have affected Owners agree to its implementation.
That’s an understandable approach in my opinion, but as I said before (post 2) it will only take 7 of the 9 affected Owners to oppose the Motion and the SBL will fail, and as I stated here even if the SBL did pass it would be in breach of the SCMA.
As iniquitous as it appears, and on the assumption that all 19 Lots are under the one Strata Plan, the correct approach is for the O/C’s water consumption charges to be a budgeted expense in the Administrative Fund, and for that expense to be shared among all 19 Owners in accordance with the Unit Entitlements of their respective Lots as an inclusive component of their individual Levies.
You may well find that the marginal amount paid by each of the 19 Owners would be minuscule anyway in the overall scheme of things, and your O/C would not need to defend any future challenge to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) by Owner/s.
The only other solution would be for the O/C to pass a SBL enabling the fitting of individual water supply meters to the 9 Lots that currently share a common meter, and to then convince the Water Supply Authority to read them and to invoice the respective Owners accordingly; good luck with that latter component.