Nominating for committee election while in dispute with OC

mark1980 wrote:

… the strata owes council 2 years of water related bill from years before. I just became an owner early this year. Should I pay this bill?

This is really between you and the previous owner (and whoever did the search on the strata minutes before you bought).  In reality, I think you’ve missed your chance.

The level of non-compliance and incompetetence in your block is incredible.  I would be raising a complaint with Fair Trading about the strata manager and would seriously consider taking action at NCAT to have the other members kicked off the committee under Section 238 of the Act.

Or you could just say to the committee members and the strata managers that these are your options and do they want to do this the easy way or the hard way?

I would also consider contacting our sponsors Strata Answers and asking them to come in, give the committee and the strata managers  the facts of life (for a fee) and then try to move on from there.

mark1980 wrote:

Will Strata Answers represent a client to deal with OC and strata manager?

They used to, for a fee.  Don’t know if they still do as they are now providing strata education services for City of Sydney.  You might also call Sachs Gerace and see how much it would cost to get them to write a letter to your strata manager explaining how they have broken the law and what they need to do to fix it..

By the way, you might also explain that it doesn’t matter what the committee decided regarding conflicts of interest – the law is the law and they can’t ignore it when it suits them.

And I would report the strata manager to Fair Trading immediately.

mark1980 wrote:

The extraordinary general meeting was conducted almost half year ago. Now it seems that it was conducted in a wrong way. Does that mean the absolution of maintenance by-law they passed at the meeting is not valid? Or that it passes a time limit, it cannot be undone?

The limit on challenging by-laws is, I think, two years.  However, there is a wrinkle in strata law that says that says just becasue an element of a meeting was wrong, not all the decisions taken at that meeting are invalid. It’s complicated and you would  probably have to show that the actual decision to create the by-law was improperly taken.

And at this point I’m getting preilously close to giving legal advice which I am not qualified to do.  You should talk to a lawyer.