Question: Should a friend or spouse of a committee member read committee correspondence before it is tabled at a meeting, or is this information confidential?
Answer: From time to time, there will be matters discussed by the committee that are subject to legal professional privilege or of a confidential nature.
Correspondence of a committee is usually a body corporate record which is available to all interested persons. However, from time to time, the committee may discuss matters that are subject to legal professional privilege or of a confidential nature, which should not be disclosed. In those circumstances, there may be a breach of the code of conduct for committee members.
Todd Garsden
Mahoneys
E: tgarsden@mahoneys.com.au
P: 07 3007 3753
We have responded to your comment in the article above.
To: If owners contact the BCM directly and the body corporate is charged, can the fee be charged to the owner?
Thank you for the answer provided above which answers my questions 99%.
1% questions:
a) Can I ask the BCM to record all costs this owner is producing by using the BCM as a kind of relay to communicate with the committee?
b) Can we stop this relay emailing somehow and the costs involved?
Background:
We have an owner who is not responding to the committee, is not contributing to managing our complex for years. Now with a common property repair/replacement project he is making things complicated.
He insists to communicate only through the BCM which costs us $20 every 6 minutes. What the BCM does is to forward his email to the committee, we respond and send it back to the BCM, who then forwards it to the owner.
We are a very functional committee with a majority of owners on the committee, working hard to catch up with important repairs and maintenance, volunteering extensive time to bring the complex to a good standard again.
The other remaining quiet owners are at least grateful, approachable, and support us whenever needed.
Our BCM is very good but got a bit unhappy when I told him that we are in control running the BC and have “only” outsourced many of our tasks to them and that their role is supportive and assisting. I think there has been a bit of discontent about that from his side :-D.
We really appreciate them and I see us with them more as a team, clearly however with us owners in the BC as the decision maker.
Not sure whether there is encouragement from the BCM to that specific owner to communicate only with the BCM.
Thank you for your really helpful site, btw.