Pet By-law ignored. By strata committee member!

TrulEConcerned wrote:

Questions: (1) What action can be taken against this committee member by members of the OC? (The dog is loud at times);

The strata committee as representatives of the owners corporation has an obligation to enforce by-laws

(2) Must a SC bring to the attention of the OC: (a) Poorly behaving members of the OC (eg those who ignore by-laws?) ;

No. They just have to enforce their by-laws.  They don’t have to make a song and dance about it.

(b) Details of pet applications received or can the SC keep that to themseves? and

(c) Details of which applications were successful and which were not?

Pet applications should be discussed at committee and the result recorded in the minutes.  Otherwise they should be in the records of the strata scheme and available to all owners.

Why don’t you submit a motion to the committee to either show that they have considered a pet application for that dog or ask them to commence actions against the tenant to require them to follow the by-laws?

I suspect you know the answers to these questions and I wonder why you are airing all these disputes with your committee – or one member of it – in these pages.

I did not know that pet matters need to be recorded in the minutes because to date in the strata I refer to, pet matters have not been recorded in minutes.

Anything that’s going to be discussed and voted on should be in the agenda, anything that IS discussed and voted on should be in the minutes.  There is no such thing (or should be) as “any other business” at NSW strata meetings.

If the committee is discussing and voting on issues that are neither on the agenda nor in the minutes then their decisions have no standing, especially in terms of the by-laws.

All that said, there is nothing to stop committee members having informal discussions away from the meeting to decide what they are or aren’t going to discuss at the meeting.

That’s why I suggested proposing a motion.

So you didn’t know the dog was there until you were ‘informed’? On that basis I can’t imagine it being too noisy.  The others have outlined steps you can take, but I’m wondering if other owners are bothered apart from you?  Or if …no offence ……. you don’t like dogs per se.  The resident has every right to have that dog if it’s not creating nuisance and if it is creating nuisance then apart from rounding up the OC Committee the Council can take action.

But before doing all this have you spoken to the resident?  Have you tried to see their point of view and how distressing it would be for them to have to remove the dog?  It would be good (and kinder) I feel to give all this some more thought I feel.

TrulEConcerned wrote:

Others in the complex have not complained because the dog’s immediate neighbours are tenants who have no idea of their rights and are shy of bothering their landlords;

You know this, how?  They told you?  They asked you what their rights were?  Seems like a generalised assumption to me.

We were given forms to fill in with multiple questions and were informed that the SC has 14 days to render an opinion. No such hurdles were positioned when the tenant of an SC member moved a dog in.

So your dog application was minuted but the committee member’s wasn’t? And they didn’t have to fill in the same forms that you did? There seem to be a lot of assumptions being made here.

Did you ever submit a motiong requesting clarification to the committee?  Maybe there’s been a change in SC policy sine you applied, following the Court of Appeal ruling.

In any case Section 156 and Section 158 of the Act, respectively deal with animals that have not been given permission under the terms of by-laws, or have been given permission but prove to be a nuisance.

But maybe the problem isn’t the dog, but the procedure and the people involved, and that is another matter entirely.

As to evidence of approval given to a pet owner…I expect the Chair will issue a letter to that effect in due course. When or if the pet owner asks for it. And that letter will not be broadcast.

There are a lot of assumptions in theses posts. The simple fact is that many strata schemes, especially small ones,  operate informally and when there is a misstep, it can usually be quickly remedied.

In this case, who has been harmed? And if that person isn’t prepared to complain through the proper and readily available channels, that’s their choice.

TrulEConcerned wrote:

I agree that it is the tenants who are harmed (or say they are) who should complain. The problem I see is that they cannot point to a document indicating a dog was approved to live in a certain lot and hence if I direct them to the by-laws (and for them to ask the SC/OC to enforce them) it may be tricky to ask the SC to enforce a by-law over a pet whose residency is undocumented;

I’m sorry, but this is utter nonsense. The tenants don’t need to have a document to refer to, to complain about a barking dog. If that’s what you are telling them, then they need to get advice from a more reliable source.

However, reading between the lines of all your other posts on this issue, it seems to me that this is more about a gripe you have with a committee member.

This thread is now closed