EC member junks the by-laws

There aren’t many privileges that come with being  a member of an executive committee – unless you actually enjoy being shouted at by angry owners – but there are EC members who take liberties with their only slightly elevated positions.

Flatchatter ‘Gin’ wrote to us about an EC member in her block who is using her car space as a makeshift storage room while permanently parking her car in one of only two visitor car spaces.

“The other is being used by a tenant, with two vehicles and a motorbike,” says Gin. “So over Christmas & New Years’, especially, no visitors had anywhere to park.

“Besides it looking extremely unsightly, with at least 30-odd boxes, old bikes, old gym equipment, clothing, etc … are there any Insurance issues, do you think?”

Yes, we do think, and here you have a perfect example of how the “blind eye” approach to strata quickly leads to chaos.

It’s hard to nail the tenant for parking illegally when an EC member is doing it, so both of them need to be told to move their vehicles.  What they are doing is parking theft, plain and simple, and it’s probably in breach of your building’s by-laws and development approval.

They are residents, not visitors, and it doesn’t matter what the tenant has been told by the landlord, he can’t park there.

Perhaps the EC member will get the message before the committee has to issue two Notices To Comply. They could issue a warning first but a Notice To Comply IS a warning; it warns residents that they will be fined if they don’t behave.

A version of this article has also appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald’s online pages and in the print edition of Domain.

Regarding insurance, junk stored in car parks is both a fire and health risk, specifically from rats and other vermin.  Someone on the EC needs to have a quiet word with its aberrant member telling her to remove the rubbish and replace it with her car. And if they’re not game, you can take the issue to Fair Trading yourself.

Once you have started dealing with the committee member, the EC or strata manager can  justifiably tell the tenant he’s in breach of the by-laws and therefore his lease.  A strong suggestion that he removes the vehicles or the next letter he gets could be an eviction notice from his landlord should do the trick.

There’s a fairly straightforward guide to driving a complaint through your EC, Fair Trading and ultimately, if need be, the NSW Civil Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) HERE   and there’s a lot more a lot more on this HERE  on the Flat Chat Forum.