I’m interested in this general topic too. My building is small (six owners, four of whom are also residents) and we have a strata manager.
I’m a total newbie to all this. But it does seem to me that a strata manager (who might never see the building from one month to the next) would not be well placed to know what needed to be done and so perhaps must be alerted by owners who are.
For example, shortly after I moved in to my apartment I noticed that the common property clothes lines were perishing and the garage guttering was badly clogged with leaves (there was veritable garden growing out of it!). So I wrote to the strata manager with a question about it. She immediately ordered the work and it was done.
All good. But I must say I regretted mentioning the clothes lines when I saw what we were charged for that. No doubt it would have been inappropriate to do so, but it would have been much cheaper for me to have bought the replacement line and taken an hour to install it myself!
My current concern is the front and side garden for my building, which is badly in need of love (aka serious rejuvenation work, pruning, replanting, etc.). I’ve recently taken to trimming the ground cover myself whenever it starts to grow over the front path and fence, and clearing rubbish. But as far as I can tell from the financials/minutes for my building, no one has been hired to do even routine garden maintenance nor does it come up for discussion. I guess at least we’re not being ripped off!
But it could be so much better, and better maintained. I do care about the appearance of my building as a whole: its interwar character is one of the reasons I bought my apartment in the first place. Given that there’s nothing happening, my personal inclination is to consult a horticulturalist/gardener I’ve worked with before and pay him myself to prepare a recommended makeover plan and quote that I could take to the OC/SC. That would be a one-time project and then a maintenance strategy would need to be set up. But I have no idea if this is a good way to proceed or not.