Question: How can a disruptive committee member be removed and prevented from rejoining? Can a chairperson make decisions if other owners are inactive?
I’m a newly self-appointed chairman and secretary in an 8 unit complex.
Our treasurer does not communicate with me. They annoy neighbours, cause dramas and talk down to residents. They continually make numerous improvements without prior approval, then submit requests to have them approved. I am in the process of applying to the BCCM on one of the issues. What would be the easiest way to remove this owner from the committee and also disallow this person from being allowed on the committee again due to their disruption of the complex?
What do you do if no other committee member wants to be involved in any decision-making? I nominated the three people on the committee because we needed the numbers, even though they had no real interest in being involved. Am I able to make decisions about quotes and timelines to do things on my own?
Answer: In a small scheme, particularly, removing an owner from the committee doesn’t remove them from your life.
The simplest way to remove a member from the committee is to call an EGM and vote on having them replaced by another owner/eligible person.
To do this, you would need to have another candidate lined up to fill the position and would likely need to rally the other owners to vote in the way you hope – they may or may not agree with your position.
An alternative would be to have the owner removed from the committee for a breach of the code of conduct. All committee members are signed up to the Code of Conduct once they volunteer. If you think someone is in breach of this, you can make an application to the Commissioner’s office to have them removed. Generally, this method is considered more complicated and lengthy to achieve than the EGM path, and, as far as I know, it is rarely applied in practice.
What you need to consider is that either option is likely to be messy and unlikely to resolve your problems. You can remove the treasurer now, but they are still entitled to nominate at the next AGM, and with seven positions available and eight units in the complex, they would be reappointed in most circumstances. There is no way to remove someone from the committee permanently. However, bans for a period of time are probably something the legislators should look at given the increasing disturbance some individuals can cause to schemes.
Even if you do remove the committee, the treasurer will still be an owner at the scheme. Any action you take will not get rid of them. Indeed, it is likely that any action you take will increase the level of antagonism between you. Eight owners are a small group, and so to some extent, you need to accept that you are stuck together while you both own in the scheme. This doesn’t mean you have to accept wrongdoing on the part of the other owner, but removing them from the committee doesn’t remove them from your life.
Without knowing all the details, your best solution may be to bolster your support from other members of the committee. It sounds like you have four or five in your current group. If you can get those people to vote and say yes or no to proposals, you can get to the point where you always have a voting majority of perhaps 3–1 or 4–1 and can make committee decisions that way. It’s not an ideal way to operate, but if you can get that level of support, then it can be a functional way to operate.
As you indicate, though, it is hard to get the interest. Owner apathy is one of the biggest drags on body corporate management. It’s challenging to overcome, but it’s essential to discuss with other owners that if they don’t participate in the process, they risk hurting their financial investment and increasing their liability risk. It’s not always easy for people to understand this, but that’s the reality.
In practice, if it is just you making the decisions, it can be tricky. At some point, the body corporate has to get on with it. A good way to manage this is to provide timelines around decision-making and to hold more formal votes. I expect you are making some decisions over email, so for timelines, you might write things like:
- “Please advise yes or no by COB Thursday. If no reply, I’ll assume your answer is yes and will proceed accordingly.”
Maybe you could set up a voting app that would help the committee members respond to this type of issue. Some management agencies provide tools like this, but there are also plenty of online options. If necessary, have more VOCs and committee meetings to get things done. Have a few more Zoom meetings, if that will help. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but try experimenting to see if you can improve engagement.
As a side note to this conversation, one further legislation change that should be considered would be to extend the limit for the number of units in a small scheme to 8, 10, or 12 units from the current six. Legislators have started acknowledging the problems with voter apathy by allowing the lowering of quorums. Still, it would be good to see more thought put towards extending these ideas to allow for more practical management rather than tying owners up with out-of-date legislation.
Lastly, it sounds like you are doing the right thing by taking the treasurer to the Commissioner’s office for unapproved renovations. It’s possibly OK in most circumstances to make one approval after the fact. Sometimes people aren’t clear on the rules or their consequences, and the key thing is to get the changes on the record. However, after the first time, the applicant can’t say they are unaware of the process, making the action deliberate. It may not seem important to them, but some people only learn the hard way, so taking the matter to conciliation/adjudication to make your point clear seems like a good step.
This post appears in Strata News #752.
William Marquand Tower Body Corporate E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au P: 07 5609 4924