Having kicked this debate off with an editorial about how it’s OK to do nothing about a problem that affects only you, I now find myself being asked to defend a position that has been misconstrued as suggesting that it’s OK to do nothing about something that only affects other people.
This was never my argument and I have to blame myself for not making my position absolutely clear. So if we are going to open the discussion out, let me try to establish what that position is:
If a by-law breach offends you or any other person, then you should pursue it – but only if you think it will do any good.
But what about a situation where a by-law has been breached but it’s extremely debatable whether or not any harm has been done?
Right now in my building one of the topmost balconies, 15 storeys up and about five metres wide, is absolutely covered with flashing white Christmas lights. You can literally see the balcony lights for miles and I can think of at least two by-laws that are clearly being breached and there may be more.
For the record, I’m not a big fan of Christmas lights (or Christmas at all, for that matter) but I know they bring a lot of pleasure to those of a less curmudgeonly disposition than mine.
However, by-law breaches are very visibly occurring. Should I write to the Strata Manager and EC? I know the lights will be gone after Twelfth Night but, hey, this is a thin end of a wedge that will appear in big fat rainbow colours round about Mardi Gras. Maybe I could get a motion up for our AGM specifically banning (or allowing?) fairy lights. Yes! That solves the issue of the by-law breach – let’s ALLOW the decorations.
I should run a campaign to wrest the rich proxy harvest from our all-powerful chair to ensure the passage of a by-law removing restrictions on what you can have on balconies and what you can do to common property to specifically allow Christmas lights, Mardi Gras decorations and, to be fair, Australian flags for Anzac Day and Australia Day. Oh, and can we allow the Aboriginal flag too … or that really cool flag that replaces the Union Flag in the top left corner of our flag with the indigenous banner. Then there will be no by-law breach and everyone will be happy.
OK, not everyone because people are different. But, most importantly, the by-laws aren’t being breached. Hmmm.
See, I have to consider the possibility that everybody except me is perfectly happy with the way things are, by-law breaches or none.
So I think I might take an executive decision to do nothing except sip another glass (or three) of Sangiovese on my balcony, the only place around here where I can’t see those bloody lights.
All joking aside, the issue of free-range parking cited by Struggler (immediately below), is one where you could reasonably argue that it affects the value of everyone’s properties because it creates an impression of chaos in the same way that allowing everyone to paint the front of their townhouses a different colour might.
It is also unfair in that case because people are using common property selfishly for their own benefit free of charge while one owner doesn’t have that option.
The offended owner has the right to take the issue to the CTTT and ask them to issue an order to enforce the parking by-law. Good luck with that! The chances are the CTTT will rule that since the majority of owners like things the way they are, they’re not going to do any such thing.
And if there was the remotest chance of that action succeeding, the majority of owners would simply amend their by-law to allow them to do what they are already doing. As Churchill famously said, democracy is the worst system of government in the world … apart from all the others.
A smarter move might be to canvas real estate agents in the area about what they think free-range parking does to the value of properties, then let the neighbours know what they say and let them make the change from within. Then mark out some external parking slots that are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Or let it go because in the final summation, the energy, time and emotion expended in trying to get selfish humans to be less selfish may not be worth whatever it is that you gain.