Investigative Journalism and Learning Hub - Waratah Strata Management ignored complaint about discrimination of some owners and privileges for others on 29 December 2020

From:	SP52948 owner
To:	Robert Crosbie, Stuart Greene
Subject:	REPORT ON SELECTIVE RIGHTS FOR OWNERS: SP52948 Lot 88 ownership of small dog against current By-Law 16 and avoidable EGM 2021
Date:	29/12/20, 2:41 pm

Good morning,

Another item for NCAT case SC 20/33352.

a) Lot 88 (who alleges to be Secretary of the EC) has been witnessed with small dog several times (last time in front of Block A on 28 December 2020 at around 17:00 hour) in direct non-compliance with CURRENT SP52948 By-law 16. No evidence of proper procedure by Lot 88 to keep an animal was published for owners.

On 30 May 2019, request from Lot 161 was denied, without valid explanation or reasons (attachment "SP52948-Lot-161-prevented-from-having-dog-without-reasonable-explanation-30May2019.pdf").

As proven many times before, SP52948 owners are treated differently.

b) In Cooper v The Owners – Strata Plan No 58068 [2020] NSWCA 250, a decision of the New South Wales Court of Appeal delivered on 12 October 2020, the Court of Appeal determined that a by-law imposing a blanket prohibition on the keeping of pets (save in respect of assistance animals) was “oppressive” contrary to section 139(1) of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (“SSMA”).

NSW Fair Trading updated its website to reflect the Court’s decision: “Owners corporations should review their by-laws following the Court of Appeal decision” in Cooper v The Owners – Strata Plan No 58068 [2020] NSWCA 250.

c) In a separate and unrelated matter, an amendment to the Strata Schemes Amendment (Sustainability Infrastructure) Bill submitted by the Animal Justice Party’s Emma Hurst, passed in the NSW Legislative Council in August 2020. The amendment proposed the removal of any by-laws that “unreasonably prohibit the keeping of animals”.

d) All this information was known, or should have been known, to committee members and Waratah Strata Management before AGM on 22 October 2020, and could have delayed AGM for valid reasons to include:

Motion for keeping animals,

Full details of income and expenses (including all levy payments for individual owners),

Corrections of misleading and incorrect statements for Minutes of AGM 2019 (including problems with Auditor's report),

Copy of FULL insurance policy for FY 2021 (still not provided to any owner),

Copy of Auditor's report for FY 2020, which had to comply with:

STRATA SCHEMES MANAGEMENT ACT 2015 SECT 95
STRATA SCHEMES MANAGEMENT REGULATION 2016 REG 21

Motions for valid tender for strata and building management contracts (in spite of three-month advance notice to do it, they were ignored),

Motions from Lot 158,

Instead, Waratah Strata Management and committee members chose to incur additional costs for EGM in January 2021 (previous estimates by the committee for conducting EGM amounted to around $3,000.00 to $4,000.00).

Regards,