Dealing with Your Strata Council
The following question was submitted through our Contact Form and we thought the Question and Answer may help other strata condo owners.
Q: What resources do we have as owners for help with Strata councils that pick and choose what gets done and won't follow the rules?
A: There are a couple of answers to that question. Because we do not know the exact situation here are a couple of broad statements and ideas:
Write and submit a notice to the strata council or the strata property manager, outlining your concern and that you would like to appear before them at the next meeting to discuss the matter. Your correspondence and the strata’s response will likely be published in the next minutes that are sent out to all owners. This may help you to get new people voted in at your next AGM if the problems persist.
You can also according to standard bylaws attend and observe the next strata meeting, if you are not put on the agenda you may not speak but you can leave the meeting and write another correspondence outlining your concerns, if you persist in this manner you may help to get things back on track by making all of the owners aware and forcing the strata council members to follow proper procedure and act reasonably and responsibly.
If your strata council is not following the duty to repair and insure then they are in violation and you should write them a letter outlining this. Refer to the standard Bylaws:
Standard Bylaws Document, Division 2, page 3.
Worst case scenario depending again on the situation, strata councils have been sued but see if you can effect change by following proper written procedures as this will become a public record for all owners and will help to vote in new members if necessary.
There are TWO very important
Submitted by JamesDT. on Sun, 11/04/2007 - 20:49.
There are TWO very important documents that help owners deal with their Strata Council: (1) is the Strata Property Act (SPA) which is a provincial statute governing strata Corporations, and, (2) the ByLaws and Rules/Regulations duly adopted by the owners of your specific complex.
It is important for owners to KNOW and UNDERSTAND these documents as they clearly spell out what a strata Council can and cannot do as well as what an owner can do if she/he feels that the Council is now functioning according to these two documents.
If your complex has an outside, independent Property Manager then an unhappy owner should write to the Property Manager and clearly state their case. The PM must bring this matter to Council and be dealt with at the next Council meeting. Having said this, however, an owner must persevere in order to have Council functions as per the SPA and the ByLaws & Rules/Regulatioons.
Well the very idea that it
Submitted by karenk on Fri, 11/09/2007 - 19:30.
Well the very idea that it is possible force a strata council to act within the law is a non-starter in most cases because the culture of that council has already been demonstrated as non-compliant. Furthermore, when you have a licensed property manager that fails to recognize his "legal" responsibility to ensure that he and the council are operating within the act,there is no recourse that I am aware of short of a general owners revolt or the courts... yes this is a real situation and yes we are trying to start the revolt but it is slow going because unless each owner is subjected to a mis-deed individualy most people are not prepared to devote much of their lives to getting this fixed until it affects them directly. Sad but true.
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