NSW: Are strata office bearers elected for each meeting or for a term?

Question: Is the chairperson elected before each meeting?

Answer: If you haven’t elected a chairperson, secretary and treasurer, to remain in office for the term of their appointment, you can elect a chairperson for each meeting.

At a general meeting, you elect your strata committee, but you don’t elect the office bearers position. This is done at a committee meeting. Generally, at your first committee meeting, immediately after the annual general meeting or shortly after, you would elected office bearers. If you’ve elected office bearers, they would hold those positions until they are removed from the position.

If you haven’t elected a chairperson, secretary and treasurer, to remain in office for the term of their appointment, which is generally up until the next Annual General Meeting, then you can elect a chairperson for each meeting. It’s highly recommended that you elect these office bearer’s positions to remain in place up until the next election being at your next annual general meeting. I think it’s important to have office bearers positions. Even though you have a managing agent in most cases, there are still schemes that are self managed.

When you have a managing agent that is appointed, you still need to have members of your committee, have those functions and duties in case you need to do something where you don’t require your managing agent. Or in fact, you might be wanting to terminate the services of the managing agent. So I think it’s critical that as office bearers, you hold those positions as well so that you can be independent in calling a meeting if you need to, issuing correspondence to owners if you need to. I think it’s critical. That’s why at all our annual general meetings, we ensure, immediately after an AGM, we elected office bearers out of committee.

I’d highly recommend that you do elect office bearers positions, to be for the term of their appointment, by election as opposed to randomly at each meeting when it’s held.

This post appears in Strata News #493.

Leanne Habib
Premium Strata
E: info@premiumstrata.com.au
P: 02 9281 6440