What is the effect of publication of EC minutes?

Dear Jimmy and other NSW strata gurus especially,

An occasional suggestion that comes up here in the ACT is that we should adopt NSW practice with distribution of EC minutes to all owners and/or posting on a notice board. I wonder what the effect of that is? 

-on accuracy of the minutes?

-on the willingness of owners to bring a matter of concern to the EC?

-on the ability to manage a sensitive on-going matter subtly rather than with a megaphone, particularly where one resident has made a complaint or brought a concern about another?

-on unfairly airing one side of an issue before the EC has had time to look into the other side?

Here the EC minutes are part of the OC records and, of course, any owner is entitled to inspect the OC records. However, it takes some effort to make a trip to the managing agent’s office so a degree of privacy is maintained. 

Our practice has been to issue a newsletter that reflects the business conducted by the EC but will often talk in generalities rather than naming names. In a recent example, the EC wanted to remind owners of our process for approving of unit alterations by the EC. The EC also wanted to inform owners that a matter to do with an unapproved alteration had gone to the Tribunal and our approvals process had been upheld. We wanted owners to appreciate that the EC had the ability to enforce our procedures and to deter owners from unilaterally choosing to not follow them. 

However, the EC did not want to draw unnecessary attention to the person who had made the unapproved alteration out of concern for her well-being. It was felt that exposing her directly would be felt as a humiliation and that the EC might seem vindictive. If anyone wanted to know the specifics, they can ask. Furthermore the Tribunal’s Decision and Reasons are in the public domain. The EC judged that it would not be productive for anyone to run her nose in it. 

The matter was sensitive in part because the unapproved alteration was the unit owner’s response to what was frankly an obsessive and deluded belief about a neighbour. How would you manage this in NSW without broadcasting every step on the long path to the Tribunal, where the first steps were to resolve that an action from the meeting would be for the least threatening-looking EC member to try to talk through the unit owner’s concerns that had led to the alteration?  Do the EC minutes end up so bland and vague as to no longer be a proper record, perhaps of no use if evidence is needed later?

On another matter with a differently composed EC, we had one EC member bring a report with photographic evidence to the table at a meeting that purported to show conclusively that very specific damage had been done to one owner’s property by another. This was recorded in the minutes of that meeting. It was only in a later meeting, after other EC members had had a chance to obtain, present or examine evidence from the other side, that we recorded that there was clearly no substance to the original complaint. It would have been very unfair to the accused person to have broadcast the initial, apparently damning information. Ultimately, it would also have been highly embarrassing to the person who had brought the complaint. We were concerned for her well-being also. 

I suspect that knowledge that this sort of exposure would ensue would discourage some owners from bringing matters of reasonable concern to the EC. Conversely, knowledge that the EC would provide publicity might encourage other owners to raise petty or unreasonable matters. Neither would be good. 

I wonder how NSW ECs manage to manage in the full exposed glare of published minutes. The difficulty is that arguing for delayed transparency is like opposing motherhood. I suspect that NSW ECs find themselves making pragmatic workarounds that ultimately are less transparent with less accurate OC records.

So, how does a diligent, sensitive EC cope when you have a difficult matter? Does it stay off the books till it is resolved? Hardly best practice, but is that where you end up?