Non attending EC members

struggler said:

Have often thought that there should be some sort of limitation to people being on the EC … We now have a ruling that if you are on the EC, you cannot vote on matters concerning your own unit. 

People don't do that as a matter of course? I have always observed that EC members here expect to absent themselves from decisions in which they have a particular interest.

At a recent AGM we had a motion put by an owner that anyone who had been on the EC for 3 consecutive years should stand down and not seek reelection for another year. It was transparently aimed at a couple of members who had put proposals for common property improvements that this owner had disliked. Plenty of past EC members spoke of the importance of continuity and corporate memory and the difficulty of finding anyone to stand. The motion was voted down resoundingly. 

Re the original question, what is the limit on the EC size in NSW? In the ACT it is 7 (unless a special resolution makes it greater). Is a voting procedure given? Here it is not. We have generally taken nominations and done one of two things. We have generally had fewer than 8 nominations and we have just had one motion to accept all the nominations. Once the chair decided we would vote on all nominees separately. I think she did that because one absent owner had written on his proxy form to vote against two particular EC members if they were nominated (one was me). As it happened those two members were reelected resoundingly but the person mentioned in the paragraph above became the only person ever to nominate then fail to get onto our EC. 

Ulverstone said: I very much wanted to be elected on the EC at our recent AGM, as we have a few new owners and I felt it maybe be possible to move forward in a civilised manner, as the building is in need of upgrading.

Before tenants were asked to nominate, the chair accepted 5 proxy nominations, 3 from investors who have never been to a meeting (nor will) and 2 from very elderly and ill tenants who do not leave their apartments.

Of course all of these votes are held by the above mentioned tenant and all of which are now on the EC.

Just to clarify, I assume by “tenant” you mean resident-owner (please let us know if that’s not the case).  Obviously this is a very dodgy procedure that has been undertaken here and I’m betting there are a few holes in the process that may give you the opportunity to fix things.

Firstly, what’s supposed to happen is that the AGM votes on the number of people that will be on the EC (to a maximum of nine), then calls for nominations. If the number of nominations exceeds the number of places, then a vote is taken to elect the members. If that didn’t happen you might have a case to go to Fair trading and the CTTT to ask for a fresh election (or just gather 25 percent of votes in the building to call for a new general meeting).

The first thing I would want to do is to view the proxy forms to make sure they were valid.  Somebody standing up and saying I have proxies from so-and-so is not enough.  I’d also check to see that joint owners of the one property weren’t nominating each other – that is forbidden by the Strata Act.

If this owner is ‘proxy farming’ using a scare campaign, your problem is how to turn people’s thinking around.  Bear in mind that most people in strata don’t want to know about internal political battles and by challenging this person, you are probably confirming some of the things that he is telling people about “outsiders”.

The one thing that will change people’s thinking, however, is if not changing is going to cost them money.  Is the way the EC is being run damaging the value of the building?  That can be an effective argument … except to people who have no intention of selling.  Are the finances out of control? Is negligence creating a problem that, if left too long, could result in special levies being imposed.

Conversely, if you want to make changes that will, for interest, mean a rise in levies, you are going to have an uphill struggle.

You could probably run a case at the CTTT that the building is not being run in the best interests of the majority of owners but that’s a bit of a lottery and could be very divisive.

Probably what you need to do is play a “long game”.  Aim for the next AGM, do as much work around the building as you can, getting to know the proxy-givers and other owners.  Then be prepared to go to the next AGM and demand that things are done properly, taking a couple of allies with you.