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Beth99 – I think that I am understanding your concerns a little better now.
Please correct me if I am wrong – You are on the committee as an ordinary member and you want to be an executive member. You did not receive enough votes from the other 5 committee members to achieve your goal of obtaining an executive position when the committee positions were voted on by email, therefore you are looking at the legality of the committee voting to see whether it was conducted properly. In doing so you have discovered some irregularities.
Yes – it appears that your concerns are justified in at least two areas (1) voting by unfinancial member(s), and (2) voting on committee positions by email.
After you have read through the information below you will realise that it puts you in a conundrum. Do you bring all of these facts to the attention of the SM and the committee and have all office bearer positions invalidated which will allow the members who are unfinacial to become so, or do you bring only the first part of them (the ‘unfinancial part’) to the attention of the SM and the committee in the hope that you achieve an executive position by default?
Here are the facts:
A member of the strata committee is not entitled to vote at a strata committee meeting if they are an unfinancial owner of a lot in the strata scheme when the notice of meeting was given and the amounts owed by them were not paid before the meeting. (See para below regarding ‘notice’).
Therefore, if the secretary or any other executive position was unfinancial at the time the notice was given about the voting for committee positions, and they did not pay the arrears before the meeting, then their position would be invalid and it should be awarded to the person who received the next highest vote.
Each member of the strata committee, and every lot owner, must be given a notice of an intended strata committee meeting at least 3 days before the meeting is due to be held.
Even more importantly, the election of office bearer positions are not permitted to be voted on by email.
Here is an extract from the OFT site:
Voting by email, teleconference or other technologies
A strata committee may pass a resolution to adopt any of the following means of voting by the committee:
- voting by teleconference, video-conferencing, email or other electronic means by a member while participating in a meeting from a remote location, or
- voting by email or other technological means before the meeting at which the matter is to be determined by the committee. This can include accessing a voting website or even a Facebook page. This form of voting cannot be used for the election of officers of the strata committee.