Foxhound5366
Honorary Master
Yeaaaah something a bit nicer than that, I need other people to still stand as trustees after all.
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Any complex trustees on here? Please help.
- Thread starter Foxhound5366
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Lupus
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Ah right, this is where your skills in advertising should come in handy, sell it as if it's the greatest joy in the world. Not the mind numbing pain in the rear it really is.
Oh I thought you were excited about the AGM because nobody attends so you don't have quorum so you waste 20 minutes only to have it postponed till next week again. At which point still nobody shows up so it's just the trustees and maybe half an owner.
EmmanuelGoldstein
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Last year I video recorded a body corporate’s AGM for extra cash.
Three hours
The entire thing was a shitshow. It nearly went to a fistfight twice.
If it wasn’t a legal issue I dearly would have loved to have shared that video here
My son helped me that night and he was literally ROFL…
They can’t get along at the best of times but want to live together.
Geriatrics with their piles of time to lord over/police people and then you have people who want to be left alone being rubbed up the wrong way with petty bullshit rules and levies and fines
And then you have the Paul Main Man that wants to beat the chairman up
Sectional title is for you if you are either mad, or on something or you fancy being a bastard
Three hours
The entire thing was a shitshow. It nearly went to a fistfight twice.
If it wasn’t a legal issue I dearly would have loved to have shared that video here
My son helped me that night and he was literally ROFL…
They can’t get along at the best of times but want to live together.
Geriatrics with their piles of time to lord over/police people and then you have people who want to be left alone being rubbed up the wrong way with petty bullshit rules and levies and fines
And then you have the Paul Main Man that wants to beat the chairman up
Sectional title is for you if you are either mad, or on something or you fancy being a bastard
Foxhound5366
Honorary Master
ROFL our group aren’t that bad, we always get quorum. With only 24 units, nobody really gets to hide away that much. Also going to be trying an online AGM this year. We had our highest attendance yet at the online SGM earlier this year, which was also our first ever online anything as a complex, so it gives me hope.
Sounds like you doing a good job. Dont resign, just put boundaries, how i have stayed in it for 4 years. Refuse to reply to any people in the complex and reply only to the managing agents once a week with their list of issues they cant sort them selves and approve any unbudgeted expenditure. Any one complains to you in the public areas tell them you will vote for them at next AGM to join the trustees. In 4 years not one of them have joined.
Foxhound5366
Honorary Master
Today is a milestone day for me: I wake up not as a chairman of the trustees, but a free man. I was nominated multiple times during the AGM but respectfully declined.
What a year it has been. I take my hat off to people who are trustees for many years in a row. I gave it my all this year, to the point where it took a significant cost in both my work and professional lives, and stepped up as chairman to drive almost everything that happened with little to no support from my fellow trustees apart from voting in favour of my polls and authorising payments to be made. Oh and three trustees resigned through the year, which didn’t make things easier.
As a result I accomplished a LOT, and I’m happy that I did this because now I can relax knowing that at least for a couple years some major items have been ticked off. It was necessary, but phew … I couldn’t face another year of it.
If more trustees had come forward and thrown their weight into complex life then maybe it would have been different, but at the latest AGM only two owners accepted nominations as trustees (which is the legal bare minimum and not much else). Good luck to them, really: I’m grateful to them for doing what none of the other owners had the courage to do (even those who complain the most).
Here’s to a new future.
What a year it has been. I take my hat off to people who are trustees for many years in a row. I gave it my all this year, to the point where it took a significant cost in both my work and professional lives, and stepped up as chairman to drive almost everything that happened with little to no support from my fellow trustees apart from voting in favour of my polls and authorising payments to be made. Oh and three trustees resigned through the year, which didn’t make things easier.
As a result I accomplished a LOT, and I’m happy that I did this because now I can relax knowing that at least for a couple years some major items have been ticked off. It was necessary, but phew … I couldn’t face another year of it.
If more trustees had come forward and thrown their weight into complex life then maybe it would have been different, but at the latest AGM only two owners accepted nominations as trustees (which is the legal bare minimum and not much else). Good luck to them, really: I’m grateful to them for doing what none of the other owners had the courage to do (even those who complain the most).
Here’s to a new future.
Lupus
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Well done, but you now see what a lot of us did warn you about.
Plus the complete and utter lack of interest owners have. Yet the biggest complaint they'll have is how the BC is a dictatorship making up rules and costing them money. But they don't pitch to meetings.
Foxhound5366
Honorary Master
Yeah man, I don’t steer away from necessary things just because it’s going to be hard … but I’m also not going to be the sucker in the hot seat endlessly. I look forward to selling here and buying my own place outside of a complex: I’m done with complex life. It’s time to be the king of my own little domain.
Lupus
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That's exactly what happened after my wife's stint as chair person
. It's a thankless and difficult job. But I do take my hat off for those that actually do something when they are chair person. Which you sound like you did to
Well done!
Many Body Corporate members don't understand what it takes to be a trustee: it is a public service with real repercussions, learning laws, checking and following up on levy collections, attending to crisis' (EG blocked drains with turds floating across the driveways), driving projects and having to tell people they aren't special enough to break rules or build/change whatever they want.
Personally, never give out your phone number: people will text your at all hours, expecting instant service, and phone you on weekends because their tenants have suddenly moved in and have issues (particularly the estate agents, the tenants, their dogs and all sundry). Email or in person only, or via the managing company.
I have been a trustee several times, generally alternating years, but remain the go to person for the complex gate -- a sign on my door saying what hours I'll assist and what are the rules regarding remotes (ALL remotes for a unit must be present when programming as I delete the ones not present ... sure you can add a remote, but make sure to bring the rest of the remotes because 9/10 times you lost a remote and not saying that part) -- keep a Google Sheet/similar of what remotes belong to what unit.
If you have a non-Smart Centurion gate, get the backup module (they are rare; check my github if you want to build one) -- when the board breaks (had water ingress twice), that's a life saver not having to reprogram all those remotes and settings. Setup is literally just the setup wizard for the end-stops and restore from backup.
Sectional Titles have benefits and down sides, though I still generally prefer them for my lifestyle. The people though... a good neighbour is one I hardly see or hear and have polite conversations in passing.
We've got the managing agents number all over the place. First recourse for issues is to contact managing agents then they defer to trustees where necessary. The only way for people to contact me is to request my details from the managing agent and even then it's email only.
A question to trustees pse - are you available 24/7? We're having minor construction work done in the complex and our chairman asked me to keep an eye on the workers on Saturday and Sunday WTF??? I said I'd be out all weekend and she wasn't happy.
Post 131 might be good advice but for me it's not practical.
Post 131 might be good advice but for me it's not practical.
You are a lucky man, wish we had that privacy.
Where I am complainants contact Trustees first, requests are brought up at the monthly meetings for approval, then escalated to managing agents.
Can't you at the next trustees meeting change how that works? I don't think I would even be a trustee if I was in that position. If my number is going up then I'm expecting a paycheck.
Tks Saor, in my ignorance I thought it was how things are done but if there's an option of going to managing agents first that's preferable. I'll see how to approach it at the meeting.
The number thing is a MASSIVE irritation. My phone's for my convenience, not for other people to phone and whine but the flippen damage is done.
For major projects there should at least be 1 point person, essentially the manager of a project. 2 people is better in cases of life happening to the the primary person. Those point people can be anyone that is part of the BC as they will have a vested interest of a successful project. The trustees will still have the duty to check and approve financial things unless a policy is adopted saying what is allowed.
When I was point person for a fibre installation, I would publish details from the contractors contact person so residents could change their install dates. There was a lot of door-to-door visits to try get details and explain things. Ultimately ~90-95% of units got fibre and those that messed around will need a contractor to install from the distribution points. This was prior to PoPIA, but I remember asking the contractors managing what I could says and what details to publish.
The reality is that most people are inherently lazy communicators and will whine on text or a phone call, giving little to no proof about anything - emotion over fact. Very few will actually walk to knock on a door and be concise and comprehensive so not to waste everyone's time. Phone numbers are a problem for this reason: email is better, though there are many that treat it like IM and reply to completely different topics, making it difficult to find details later. I won't start on WhatsApp groups and nasty/petty/short sightedness.
Unfortunately people expect trustees to be superman, the police and the government. Then there are trustees with messiah complex, or taking on way more than they can reasonably do without spreading the load.
Trustees have a fiducial duty, and are more like executive and non-executive directors of companies (board of trustees).
Thanks for explaining @repitah.
Sorry for me but I was elected to oversee the current job of replacing several courtyard doors - and I'm female! Fortunately we have several engineers (ex trustees) as volunteers so I take one of them with me to have a quick look around. Some of the men in this complex have done their stint as trustees and have now resigned, others refuse so I was painted into a corner and had to accept the trusteeship, a position I refused for 3 years.
What really, annoyed me though is the work was quoted, approved and scheduled to begin on Wednesday and finish on Friday/Saturday. On Friday the contractor told me the Main Man Messiah to whom you refer above (he's the financial trustee) instructed him to replace sections of the ceiling in 2 units he owns - HUH? Work on the courtyard doors stopped the ceilings were fixed and the original job is now 2 days behind meaning we'll have workers on site again tomorrow nevermind the extra cost PLUS other units in the complex are on a waiting list to have their ceilings done.
I'll mention the ceilings at the next trustee meeting, perhaps he got permission to do it urgently. It's still unfair though.
Sorry for me but I was elected to oversee the current job of replacing several courtyard doors - and I'm female! Fortunately we have several engineers (ex trustees) as volunteers so I take one of them with me to have a quick look around. Some of the men in this complex have done their stint as trustees and have now resigned, others refuse so I was painted into a corner and had to accept the trusteeship, a position I refused for 3 years.
What really, annoyed me though is the work was quoted, approved and scheduled to begin on Wednesday and finish on Friday/Saturday. On Friday the contractor told me the Main Man Messiah to whom you refer above (he's the financial trustee) instructed him to replace sections of the ceiling in 2 units he owns - HUH? Work on the courtyard doors stopped the ceilings were fixed and the original job is now 2 days behind meaning we'll have workers on site again tomorrow nevermind the extra cost PLUS other units in the complex are on a waiting list to have their ceilings done.
I'll mention the ceilings at the next trustee meeting, perhaps he got permission to do it urgently. It's still unfair though.
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Herr der Verboten
Honorary Master
ASL?