Question: Who can vote to confirm minutes of a previous AGM for a strata body corporate?
Who can vote to confirm minutes of a previous AGM for a strata body corporate? No eligible voters were present at our 2020 AGM and at our 2021 AGM there was a motion to pass the minutes.
I do not believe that anyone can vote on this as no-one was present, but I have received the minutes of the 2021 AGM and this motion has been passed.
Answer: The confirmation of minutes motion can be voted on by any person who is able to validly vote at the meeting.
The confirmation of minutes motion, as with all motions on an agenda, can be voted on by any person who is able to validly vote at the meeting.
The motion asks whether the minutes were a true and correct record of the previous meeting. It is not a prerequisite to have been at the previous meeting to vote on the motion.
Yes, it is easier to say with certainty that the minutes are valid if you were present at the meeting. However, you can still be reasonably confident that they were a true record provided you have some faith in the secretary/body corporate manager who attended the meeting and whose job it is to record the minutes. In turn, the minutes would have been reviewed by committee members and other owners who could have objected at the time had they been wrong. If there were issues, an amended set of minutes may have been provided. You can also verify factors on the minutes such as whether levies have been raised in accordance with the motion, whether there was an audit or contracts signed on the basis of the minutes and so on. If those items were wrong at the time the minutes were issued there would likely have been ongoing issues stemming from this indicating a problem. If those warning signs aren’t there, then it should be reasonably possible to confirm the minutes without having been present at the meeting.
Some alternatives to this would be for the Committee to go back and check with someone who was present at the meeting and record in the minutes that that process had taken place or the owners could agree to pass the minutes with a note that no one voting on the motion was present at the previous meeting. If there is a problem with one item on the minutes a correction could be included or could be addressed via a motion on the new agenda.
The other consideration here might be what will happen in the event that the minutes are not confirmed. It might depend on how serious the issue was for rejecting the minutes, but most of the time this is considered a procedural motion that should be passed. Otherwise it is difficult to wind back the clock on actions that may have already taken place.
This post appears in Strata News #474.
William Marquand
Tower Body Corporate
E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au
P: 07 5609 4924
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