A block of flats has freestanding mailboxes set in a brick wall that has just the mailboxes. The wall was hit by a truck and needs to be replaced. The mailboxes are old, quite narrow, and do not meet the Australian Standard. The OC says that the brick wall will be rebuilt as it was, citing an instruction from the Committee. It seems to me that this is an opportunity to have mailboxes that meet the standard installed, and this may be less cost than a new wall. The manager is not being helpful and just says the Committee said to do it this way. I don't know if the Committee knows about the AS. Is thate anything I can do? Contact the insurer?
I have no idea if this was voted on. The OC manager will not send my information to the Committee, and I have no other way to contact them. The OC manager will not give me Committee contact details. This is a Victorian OC. In any case, Committee has proven to be generally very weak, quite a few poor decisions.
The Australia Post standard is cited at https://auspost.com.au/content/dam/auspost_corp/media/documents/letterbox-security-specification.pdf http://letterboxes.net.au/letterbox_specifications.htm The AGM was in January 2017. The bingle was in December 2017.
I see. We usually find the OC circulates and emergency notification in cases like this, to at least hear if there are any objections etc from the owners. However, the committee likely decided it was urgent and just to get it underway. The Y-man
While it's a bit pressing, there is no real urgency. the mail boxes are inttact, Just moved sideways 40 mm. The wall is not going to fall over. Building a new wall will take a week, during which time we have no mail boxes. Can the cost of mail redirection be part of the insurance claim? A new compliant set of mail boxes can be installed in a few hours - made off site, bolted in. There is a mail box standard, AS-NZ 4253-1994.
For what it's worth, I think you have a really fair point and have every right to jump up and down about this. I come across stupid decisions like this all the time -and the management never listens to a mere Property Manager- so I generally have to work with the property owner to come up with with outside-the-box solutions. Usually this involves tracking down other property owners in the complex and making your pitch to them.
The last AGM minutes should list which lot owners have been elected to the committee. And the strata manager will also have their contact details.
Join the committee ! You aren't going to get anywhere if the decision has already been made and you weren't part of it.
I have asked to be advised of new posts for this thread, not working! Sorry for the delay. The OC and Committee do not like me very much as I can see all the BS decisions. It would be a very aggro experience to be on Committee. The OC will not supply me Committee details, and says that I have to visit them to look at the records. At the 2017 AGM I gave my proxy to the OC manager, had a lot of very tricky questions. The OC got around this by the OC manager not going to the meeting, and another staffer attended. A proxy goes to named person, named person not attend, proxy useless. This is the first time in 30 years that the OC manager did not attend. It gets a bit worse. The mailbox job started a day early, so there was no mail that day. It looks like there was asbestos in the old wall, now in dust around a tree on the nature strip. I've reported this to the local council and have a sample of the sheeting. It has taken one bloke three days to demolish a mailbox wall about 1500 X 1500 mm and build all except the top row of boxes. I would have had two blokes taking one day. The OC said it would take a week, so residents who have a mail redirect for a week have lost. I said to the OC that the redirect costs are part of the insurance claim, no reply.
