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My EC is trying to force me to allow them to place common electrical equipment within my private lot. Not only only this, they have previously, without consent, installed other common electrical equipment (large boxes and conduit) within my lot.
Is there anything that enables the EC/OC to require an owner to allow common property infrastructure to be placed within the private lot? I wouldn't have thought so.
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Can you be a little more specific; like are we talking about a home unit or a villa / townhouse, and whereabouts within your Lot is the existing / proposed equipment to be installed, and by what means is your E.C. applying force?
Sorry, but it's difficult for me and other regular contributors to Flat Chat to provide any worthwhile advice in the absence of these and any further specifics that you think may be useful.
This is corrupt behaviour. Sorry but your renos will be on hold for a short while. Seek mediation through the Office of Fair Trading straight away, putting as little as possible in writing, save it to politely dump on them at the mediation session, but don't forget to mention that they are trying to do something entirely unethical by threatening you.
Maybe just go ahead with your renos, regardless. No one could blame you.
The CTTT’s processes are far too ad-hoc, and consequently the outcomes they produce are unpredictable – so I’d avoid them like to proverbial plague, and I certainly wouldn't antagonise your EC and breach Strata Laws by making unauthorised additions to the Common Property (CP).
I can’t imagine how a transformer and conduit would be particularly disruptive to the use of your garage, or even to the aesthetics of your Lot, and whilst that’s for you to determine, your EC needs to concurrently consider the ongoing responsibility for maintenance / replacement of the transformer, cabling, and conduit and agreed access arrangements to your Lot for that purpose.
So I’d turn the whole thing around by writing to the Secretary of your EC with a request for the matter of the placement of CP on your Lot, together with the agreed process for the installation of and the maintenance access for that CP and for that already installed on your Lot, to be placed on the Agenda for the EGM – together with your item regarding those CP alterations.
You may wish to draft those Agenda Items yourself.
In that way, if there’s no EGM nothing is resolved, and as significantly, you’'re not displaying the same “forceful” behaviour as your EC, and rather, just following the correct discussion and decision-making procedures for such matters in a Strata Community.
You’re ever the idealist, Whale. Here’s what I think would happen if this problem was addressed how you suggest in our strata and probably in Frustrated Strata Dweller’s too: absolutely nothing.
The request would be made for an EGM, to the Secretary let’s say via the Owners Corporation’s letterbox. Someone MAY clear the letterbox in about six weeks. Whoever finds the request MIGHT send it on by snail mail to the strata manager after another few weeks.
The strata manager would send emails to the EC saying a General Meeting has been requested. No EC menders would respond to it. Etc. Etc.
Months and months would go by.
AT least mediation, at the Office of Fair Trading or even elsewhere, would bring things to a head and expose the corrupt behaviour of the EC.
Nobody has mentioned the CTTT here except you. I don’t see it going that far.
That’s what I like about Flat Chat; everyone’s entitled to an opinion.
Ok my reference to “the CTTT” was a slip-of-the-typing-finger, but substitute “the Fair Trading Tribunal” that shares mediators with the former, and my original comments stand; both claim to represent authority without actually possessing any of their own.
So back to my idealist opinions.
It’s a bit of a long-bow to suggest that Frustrated Strata Dweller’s (FSD) Committee is behaving corruptly; ignorantly perhaps, but that’s no reason for Proprietors such as the FSD to themselves abandon, circumvent, or breach the established processes and legislated provisions of Strata Law.
In my experience in Strata and elsewhere, Committees don’t collectively behave as idiots on purpose but rather, as I have already suggested, out of ignorance, through provocation, or perhaps due to the influences of one Member.
That’s why I suggested that FSD follows established processes by drafting some Agenda Items for, and requesting the convening of an EGM to discuss and agree upon matters of common interest, including FSD’s proposed alterations to Common Property.
It may well be that the Committee as a whole hasn’t even considered formalising access to FSD’s Lot for the installation and ongoing maintenance / repair of the Common Property items already installed within, let alone what’s now additionally being requested, and all in circumstances where at some time FSD may not even be the Proprietor of that Lot.
That’s why I’m again suggesting that FSD drafts the Agenda Items that he/she wants considered at an EGM and delivers those to the Strata Manager and/or Committee Secretary, with copies to EC Members, perhaps including a preamble to explain the implications of the Committee’s current position, which I’ll bet not every Committee Member is even aware about.
That approach can only strengthen FSD’s case should things go down the path suggested by the Urban Spaceman, and mediation still becomes necessary.
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