Can we limit committee members?

There are more restrictions on the election of owners to strata committees than most people realise.  And the process of the election, as set out in Section 9 of the Regulations, is probably ignored more often than it is strictly adhered to.

That process is that you call for nominations, then take a vote on how many places you want on the committee (to a maximum of nine).  That is where you could force an election to exclude deadbeats.

If you have, say, seven nominees and two of them are deadbeats, you propose a committee of five and then invite all the nominees to explain what they would bring to the committee and/or what they have done in the year in which they served.

If you don’t warn the deadbeats this is what you plan to do, they will be well and truly blind-sided while the keener  candidates will, pre-warned and prepared, look like shining stars.

There are also specific restrictions on who can and can’t be nominated for election, as spelled out in section 31  and section 32 of the Strata Schemes Management Act (2015):

For instance, owners can only nominate one candidate for election.  That means if they self-nominate they can’t nominate anyone else.

Co-owners can’t self-nominate … they either have to have a nomination in writing from their  co-owners or get someone else to nominate them.

You can’t have more than one committee member from the same lot unless they also own another lot in the building.

Owners who were unfinancial at the time the meeting was called – i.e. haven’t paid their levies in full – can’t be nominated unless they have cleared their debt before the meeting (many strata managers want to see the money in the bank and won’t accept cheques at the meeting).

Non-owners can be nominated but not by owners who are also standing for election.

Also, unless they are owners in the block, building managers, rental agents of properties in the block can’t be elected.

Non-owners connected with the developer, the building manager or rental agents operating in the block can’t be elected to the committee unless they declare their connection before the election.

dotdotdot wrote:

I do like the idea of asking nominees to present what they’ve done in the last year / what they can bring in the new year. I assume this would happen during the AGM? And then everyone votes for their favourite candidates?

To avoid the candidates from being over-prepared, I would simply ask at the beginning of the election part of the proceedings, that everyone who is nominating introduce themselves to the owners and outline brieflky what they’ve done and what they plan to do.

Speaking of voting in this case, how would that work? For any agenda item during the AGM? Does every owner in attendance equal 1 vote?

Voting for ordinary motions are on one vote per lot unless someone calls for a poll vote, which would done based on unit entitlements. Votes on special resolutions and elections should be done on unit entitlements.

And what about owners with multiple lots – is it 1 vote per lot, or just 1 for the owner?

It’s a vote or votes per lot.

We also have a developer/builder that still owns 15 lots – so would they have 15 ‘votes’ as well?

That depends on how many lots there are in the building.  If the developer still has more than 50 percent of the unit entitlements, their voting power is reduced to one-third of its previous value.

And can each owner bring 3 proxies, or is it just 1? I have received all sorts of conflicting info about the above, so I’m well and truly muddled!

For schemes of up to 20 units, each owner can carry one proxy. After that, it’s one proxy vote per 20 lots, which means, in effect,  its actually only one proxy vote per owner up to 39 lots. From 40 to 59 lots it’s two proxies. From 60 to 79 lots it’s three proxies per owner, and so on. Why?  Because you can’t have fractions of lot owners.