Confessions of a Strata Council Vice President

They must have seen me coming a mile away. Fresh blood with that ‘I was once on student council’ look. I had not been an owner in the building for long before I was approached by Angela. Join the strata council, she said, it’s not that big a commitment. Ten meetings a year, a few emails, easy. Ha! I know better, I scoffed. I hadn’t been on the arts council for thirteen years – president for six – for nothing. I knew email was the silent killer, and that there was always more work to do than you planned for. I told her to give me a year before asking again. I was burnt out. I needed time to resettle with my family.

A year later, another council member knocked on my door. I liked Fred. He lived just down the hall from us. He talked me into it. Okay, fine, I said. Not many months after I joined, Fred had the audacity to move to the Okanagan. He had replaced himself with me. Jerk. Or maybe Fred was just smart. Succession planning in action.

We’ve owned our condo for eight years. I have been on the council for seven of those, more or less. I had to take time off to recover from a head injury in 2020. Other than that spell, I have volunteered my time to the cause. There are perks to being on the council. I like knowing what is going on with my building, maintenance-wise, even though I only own one sixty-second of it. The interesting thing about condo ownership is that you own your unit, but you also own a share of the common property and pay for its upkeep with a strata fee relative to the square footage of your unit. Common property in our building is the hallways, the elevator, the building’s mechanical and plumbing workings, the lobby, the exercise room, the parkade, the parking lot, the landscaping, the guest suite and adjacent washroom, the roof, the exterior, and the exterior infrastructure stuff like drainage. I appreciate having a say in how the common property is maintained and improved. Our building is twenty years old this year. In West Coast terms, twenty is considered an ‘older building’. Shocking, I know, but ongoing maintenance is necessary, especially in a damp climate. The provincial government has now required all strata councils to order a depreciation report and dedicate ten percent of all strata fees to a contingency fund. Too many condo owners in the province have been subject to crippling levies as a result of poor management. I personally know of a large complex where individual owners had to come up with eighty thousand dollars each to reconstruct the entire building’s envelope due to years of water damage from wind and rain. It is in my best interest to be involved. Of course, every owner receives strata council meeting minutes. They only have to read them to stay informed. They can also vote on new amendments and resolutions at annual general meetings. Another perk is being an integral part of one's community. I like to bring a lightheartedness to our meetings. Unless there is an element of fun to volunteering, I am likely to lose heart and interest. 

Are there downsides to joining a strata council? Sometimes. We recently had to hold a mediation meeting for two owners who were basically at war with each other. We had never done that before. We set strict parameters for the meeting, keeping in mind that any action we took would set a precedent for future similar situations. The meeting was not comfortable, but I believe it achieved what we set out to accomplish, which was satisfying. I have also had panicked calls from people when water is dripping from their light fixtures. Many new condo owners are inexperienced. They own their units, but they don’t quite understand that the strata council members are not landlords. We can advise (in this case I told the owner to run upstairs and knock on the door of the unit above. Sure enough, the person above had let their tub overflow), but the responsibility to call their insurance company and deal with damage is their own responsibility.  Additionally, as stated earlier in this post, much of our business between meetings is done by email. Unless you are good at keeping up with this brand of correspondence, then strata council is not for you. I had to set up a separate email account due to the sheer volume of emails I send and receive weekly for strata business.

While the building next door is self-managed, we in our larger building employ a property management company. They send a representative to our meetings, seek out quotes for maintenance work, take care of meeting minutes and archive them, keep track of contractors, look after our accounting, negotiate insurance, handle legal advice, and communicate with owners on our behalf, acting as a buffer in difficult situations. They can also be very helpful in emergencies. As far as we’re concerned employing a good management company is money well spent.

Our current strata council has seven members. Only two of us are under sixty, mainly due to the fact that retired and semi-retired people have time to volunteer. I need to start looking around at other owners for future members. Perhaps one day soon I will pull a Fred. I will find a fresh-faced youngish person and invite them to join council, and then ten months later, abandon them. Just kidding. Sort of.

‘til next time,

Rebecca

*Angela and Fred are fake names to protect the innocent

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