Committee member wants $21,450 to organise repairs

I haven’t come across the situation we are facing, in, you guessed it, Qld.  We are new arrivals here from Sydney and have bought into a 25 townhouse, 8 year old development.

Something very strange is going on and the woman who is the chairperson of the committee came up with the idea that she should be paid to do the ‘coordination of common property maintenance’ at a figure of $21,450 for her efforts. 

This money is not to actually do any work, merely phone a tradesperson, organise quotes, present quotes to the committee etc. Hubby and I think something is very suspect about this, there are 7 people on the committee of whom 6 are overwhelmingly (to the point of being hostile to those of us against the motion) in favour of it. 

It seems inconceivable that owners would jeopardise their investment as should the motion pass, our levies will go up to $5,300 – and that is for a complex with not a single solitary facility.  That is around $2,000-$3,000 more than comparable buildings within the area.  So levies are already high. 

I got a letter from the main selling agent of this complex where he stated that this building is being increasingly difficult to ‘sell’ as for what we pay in levies most other buildings have a pool at the minimum for the same levies.  And this motion would put our already high levies up by 17%.

When I sent this letter to the committee and the strata manager they dismissed it out of hand, saying ‘what would a real estate know about body corporates’. 

Sorry this is getting long but one more issue that is really disturbing, I have phoned various government depts up here and have been told that basically the body corp can do what it wants to IF the majority of owners vote for the motion to pass.  The problem is that most of the 25 owners are off-site and let the committee vote for them by proxy.  As 6 out of 7 are gung ho pro this motion, it is quite likely it might pass. 

The secretary of the body corp and the body corp manager have both told us (and presumably others who asked) that is ‘very common’ to have a paid person to organise maintenance and repairs – again, just to organise, not carry out any work. 

I have asked both of them twice to support this assertion by telling us of some other buildings that indeed have such a person (the person the committee want to nominate is a part time shop assistant with no building background) but they have failed to come up with one comparable, notwithstanding their assertion that it is. 

In your opinion, do we have a case against the secretary of the body corp and the strata manager for assuring us this is very commonplace when they can’t even come up with one or two buildings that pay someone $21K to make some phone calls and send some emails? 

We have it in writing from the secretary of body corp so we can hold him to that but only spoken word from the strata manager.    Your input and advice would be fantastic.