How to requisition a meeting

One of the first things you will have to do as part of a renovation project is to put a motion to the owners corporation, or perhaps one of the delegated decision makers.

For many buildings this is a trivial exercise. Under iideal circumstances the executive committee meets frequently and will help you through this process.The easiest and simplest way is to get the support of the executive committee or the strata manager and then let them manage the process for you.

But ideal circumstances are unfortunately rare. Strata Renovations has seen situations where the following types of problems have occurred:

• a building that has never had an executive committee meetings;
• a building that has never held a general meetings (outside the AGM); and
• a building that habitually only allowed owners to present motions at the AGM

For many owners wanting to renovate their apartments, these sort of problems can be disastrous. This is particularly a problem if you have just purchased a run-down apartment, you are a new owner, do not know anyone yet, and are desperate to renovate.

If an owner is not happy with how the executive committee is running the building, they can requisition a general meeting at any time if they have more than 25% of the total units of entitlement of the building. If necessary a number of owners can join together to force a meeting to be called. This process is called ‘requisitioning’ a meeting. This provides an avenue for owners to challenge decisions made by the executive committee, and if the executive committee is not performing its duty properly this is the way to appoint a new committee if you have sufficient voting power.

Alternately any owner can require that a motion be placed on the agenda of the next general meeting. But unless you can gather 25% of the votes the Secretary is not required to call a meeting immediately.