Broken System

Hi Whoopi, I totally agree with you 100%! I sympathise with you and your continuing struggles with the SC.  And hell yes, why can’t people realise that Strata Law is an applicable law also? Same as the Traffic Act for instance? 

I and another (who now appears to have gone rogue) managed to terminate our old Strata and a new one appointed – with the correct voting processes, mind you. But this appears to be a waste of time as the new Strata is gearing up to be the same same as the old one.

I am unsure exactly what qualifications you need to have to be a SM but it appears if there is any easy way out of ANY situation – our’s is right up there with comments like ‘the way around this is…..’ .  It is terribly frustrating and unprofessional.

I am not opposed to any reasonable spending/enhancement/works/quotes as long as it is all compliant, where necessary the Act is followed and matters voted on. The SC appear to be a law unto themselves and can see myself being chucked off at the next AGM so they can carry on freely doing what they want.

Our SC seems to believe if they merely discuss something, then that’s it! It’s all suddenly binding. And the SM doesn’t care as it is less work for him.

I think Fair Trading should fine SM’s and heavily (imagine that!!) – then the SC’s would be much more compliant.  The fact is you need big dollar$ to trawl through the Tribunal which many don’t have and sadly as you have discovered Whoopi. The whole Strata business is so unregulated and there’s no entity to enforce anything.

Sorry I haven’t been much help but I couldn’t resist penning my support.

Strata Manager.

@tharra said:

@Whoopi said:
 My advice to anyone ever considering buying into Strata is DON”T. You place your money and your property in the hands of volunteers, untrained in any way for the job . No business acumen, no building experience and no people skills. Emotionally immature despots who are attracted to being on a committee due to a hunger for control, power and the access to the considerable money available to them.

I feel for you in your situation but to lump all strata schemes in the “run by incompetent tinpot dictators” pile does disservice to those of us who strive to keep their strata schemes running as smoothly as possible by volunteering their professional skills & experience to their owner’s corporations.  

At their best, strata schemes allow neighbours to create a greater sense of community and to make democratic decisions about how to maintain and improve shared facilities for the good of all. However, there will always be some people with less than ideal character traits, fortunately in a minority in most places. 

@JimmyT said:

At the end of the day, your investment of time, money and energy with either pay off or it won’t but, at the very least, you will have learned something about yourself and about other people.

And that’s worth something.  

I agree with all JT said. I recently resigned from our EC after being a member for 9 years and treasurer for 8 of those. I had no background in law or finance but I learned quite a bit about both, which was interesting. ‘It is not rocket science’, nor even the kind of science I did for my day job. We had some really big issues and improvement projects that took a great deal of work but we got them done. Owners are generally very happy with what was achieved.

I did conclude that at any given time there will be 5% who are completely resistant to reason and/or seriously lacking in normal social skills. EC members get exposed far more to such people and it can wear you down. I am glad of it though. I learned a lot about people that I had not seen through work or other aspects of life. 

I don’t doubt that ECs can end up with such people dominating within the committee too. They can be aggressive, assertive and alternately* diplomatic or unpleasant. The bullies I have encountered have come from high-powered positions and were used to being taken seriously and getting their way. Being very plausible, they could sway more mild-mannered members for a while. The solution is to out-vote and out-lobby them, whether they are in the EC or outside of it, but it takes determination and many would rather walk away. They only have any power if nobody stands up to them using facts and reason. I am pleased to have hung in there and achieved a lot while on our EC but I need a break from it now. 

*In one recent example, the guy does seem to alternate between on one hand giving me compliments for various achievements and being genial face to face, and on the other hand presenting written formal-looking reports to the committee that would, at face value, demonstrate that the entire EC and me in particular as treasurer have neglected various serious obligations. 

In an earlier example, a different, no longer current EC member had his own rather eccentric interpretation of a particular provision of the Act. His insistence sufficiently unsettled some other EC members that it held up a review of our Rules for quite a while. Common sense, our managing agent, a strata specialist lawyer’s advice, the content of an OCN newsletter article, Rules that had survived Tribunal scrutiny and Rules adopted without controversy by other OCs were all inconsistent with this guy’s interpretation but none of this was enough to shake his confidence that he was right. In the end, I wrote to the Attorney-General, quoted this EC member’s legal argument verbatim and on the other hand presented the usual interpretation. I asked the A-G, whose department had not long previously reviewed the Act, for advice about who was right. Only with that advice in hand were we able to proceed with our internal review. Even so, our guy wrote to the A-G to let him know that he was wrong. 

All quite funny in retrospect but stressful and irritating at the time when trying to get on with useful things. 

Hi rthorburn

For the last six+ years I’ve done everything humanly possible to ‘right’ the situation within our Sydney strata scheme.  I recently said, again, to the Head of Mediation, NSW Fair Trading that either I have failed spectacularly or the system has failed me.  He said to me, again:  “The system has failed you.”

They are our homes, our money, our lives; under no circumstances should it be like this.