This article discusses whether owners ask questions at committee meetings and what to do if the committee restricts discussion.
Question: At a recent committee meeting, lot owners attended but were not allowed to ask questions, even after general business. Is this correct?
Answer: If your committee doesn’t want dialogue at committee meetings, there could be good or bad reasons for it.
Technically, a committee meeting is between committee members, so if a committee wants to, it doesn’t need to accept comments from the floor.
In that situation, if an owner wants to have their voice heard, they should submit correspondence before the meeting to the committee requesting that it be tabled at the next meeting or submit a committee motion.
Practically, healthy schemes have good communication between the committee and owners. I think most committees aren’t opposed to owners participating in the meeting, provided they add something useful to the conversation.
If your committee doesn’t want that dialogue at committee meetings, there could be good or bad reasons for it.
On the bad end, they could be unnecessarily autocratic and in that situation, you might look at having new members voted in when the chance arises to change the committee’s culture.
Perhaps, though, they have these rules to help control committee meetings. Maybe there are difficult owners who disrupt meetings, or the committee simply wants the meeting to move forward as efficiently as possible. Maybe you could speak to some of the committee members outside of a meeting about why they don’t allow comments. This will give you an idea of where things stand and go from there.
This post appears in Strata News #657.
William Marquand Tower Body Corporate E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au P: 07 5609 4924