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The secretary of our SC offered to ‘tidy’ up our by-laws in order to make them more user friendly.
Once the draft was completed he sent it out to the rest of the SC to look at while informing us that “all previous by-laws have been maintained.”While going through the draft I noticed that some by-laws had actually been changed – along the lines of something that was once allowed, now is not.
Once I spotted this I asked that he provide a list of all such changes to the SC to discuss and debate. He has refused to do so.
He has now asked the strata manager to send the draft to the Owners indicating it is now up to the Owners to view the document in its entirety and vote on whether we should adopt it.
He is of the opinion that changes to existing by-laws do not need to be pointed out to owners to vote on and if they don’t pick them up while reading the draft, that is tough luck.
Is he correct?
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Define “correct”. There is nothing under the law that prevents him from doing what he’s doing, or forces him to do otherwise, but that doesn’t make it right.
You can force the issue by providing a summary of the changes, in order of significance, to the committee and put a motion to their next meeting that it be issued to all owners before the general meeting required to approve them.
You could also propose a motion for your next general meeting that all by-law changes be discussed and decided individually, again adding your summary to the motion to go out with the agenda.
If you want to go hard-ball, propose a motion to your next strata committee meeting that the secretary be replaced in that role by another competent member of the committee (you’ll need someone to put their hand up) becasue of their failure to fully inform owners of the detail of the proposed by-law changes.
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Why don’t you submit your own version of the bylaws and a motion to accept them. It’s up to the other owners to them make a decision as to which version to accept.
Under to 2015 legislation, bylaws are treated as a whole document and not the individual bylaws previously. So what was allowed before can be changed to not allowed, provided it passes a special resolution.
Anecdotal evidence shows that owners are unlikely to pass blanket changes to bylaws without sufficient information.
And finally remember that a motion can be changed at the meeting. That means that if there is some bylaw in the secretary’s document that the majority at the meeting don’t like, that can be changed and the amended motion voted on.