How to take back Office Bearer Functions from Strata Manager.

I don’t think you need a general meeting resolution. The committee has a chair, treasurer and secretary. While the contract with a strata manager may include that the SM will exercise many of the functions of those office bearers, those office bearers have the final responsibility to see that those functions are being carried out properly. The SM is engaged to assist the executive committee in its functions, not the other way around. The committee has a function and responsibility to oversee the office bearers and satisfy themselves that the office bearers functions are being carried out properly.

So, if the committee decides that it wants certain of the office bearer functions to be undertaken by those office bearers rather than delegated to the SM, then it can so resolve. Our executive committee has traditionally been more hands-on than most and each new SM has had to learn that.

The SM has a professional duty to step in and advise if they think the committee is not acting as it should but ultimately the buck stops with the committee. If the SM thinks the committee is really going off the rails, the SM would be wise to put their advice in writing to make it clear they did what they could. Ultimately, the SM acts on the advice of the committee, so long as what they are being asked to do is legal. The committee can ask the SM to do any of the delegated functions that are mentioned in the management contract but the SM can’t demand to do a committee function if the committee wants to do that function itself.

To maintain a good professional relationship, I suggest that the committee should keep the SM informed so the SM can satisfy themselves that those functions the committee has taken back to itself are being carried out.

OK, the mechanics in NSW are thus:

The owners corporation elects the committee at the AGM and the committee then elects the office-bearers. At any point in the year until the next AGM the members of the strata committee can declare an office “vacant” and elect someone else to it. That person remains on the committee, however.  It requires a special resolution by owners at a general meeting (75 per cent of people voting) to remove a committee member mid-term.

Drilling deeper, at the AGM, the process is

1. The chairman calls for nominations for the committee
2. The owners vote on how many people they want on the committee: maximum nine, minimum 1.
3. If there are more nominations than agreed numbers on the committee, an election is held.
4. The election is conducted by people writing the names of the candidates they want, up to the maximum, on a BLANK piece of paper.
5. Unit entitlements count as every election is effectively a poll vote (so it’s good to have friends, literally, in high places).
6. Any election that doesn’t follow the above process is invalid.

By the way, co-owners can’t self-nominate (your co-owner has to nominate you) and you can’t be nominated by someone who is standing for election themselves. More than one person from the same lot can’t be on the committee and you don’t have to be an owner to serve on the committee so long as you are nominated by one. There are other restrictions too arcane to go into here.

Even with that explicit delegation to the strata manager and even with that being a decision of the OC at a general meeting rather than a committee decision and OC decisions are superior to committee decisions, the Act still makes the chair, treasurer and secretary responsible for their functions as set out in the Act. The Act is superior to decisions of the OC or the committee. So, I would contend, that the office bearers have obligations derived from the Act which over-ride the delegation made by the general meeting decision to enter into the contract with the managing agent.

The office bearers must ensure that the delegated functions are occurring properly by either insisting that the manager does the job and doing it themselves if that is unsuccessful. If the manager is demonstrably failing to do the job they were contracted to do then you could give them notice.

If I were on the committee, I would be trying to improve relations with the manager while being very firm about what you expect but also pragmatically just doing some things ourselves as a committee because that gets it done and done right.

As usual, NSW states explicitly what the ACT has to work out by applying logic to the more general principles.

That’s one memorable quote I had forgotten. These days I’m more likely to say, if you do nothing,  you get the committee you deserve.