Belvue Apartments Crosslease 93132
On Friday, 14. June 2013, I had the authority to act according to "the absolute majority vote of all owners" and I acted on the best information available at that time. When talking on that same Friday with Auckland Council, it turned out that the best information available at that time was incorrect and I corrected my actions still on the same day. The BCA e-mail claiming that I acted improperly was *written in hindsight*, three days later on 17. June 2013.
At the AGM, my voice was drowned out by the collective voices of Catherine, Glenn and Graham continuing to sidetrack by wrongly claiming that
Yes, I have acted against the majority will of the Owners Committee, both intentionally and with the right to do so. But judged by the information available at that time, the Owners Committee had acted against the majority will of owners. The voting result validated my actions. The Owners Committee may have had reasons to be unhappy, but had certainly no reasons to condemn my actions.
Neither our rates bills nor the Auckland Council pages on rates were clear that even though Auckland Council abolished the "Recycling & Refuse Remission", we were still receiving a discount under a different scheme. Paula Beaton (BCA) informed us about the loss of our discount at the 2012 AGM and as you can see from the e-mail trail "rubbish.pdf" (contained in archive "protected.zip" on the Privacy page), Catherine Byrne and Janet Steedman acknowledged the loss of our discount in their postings and Graham Smith's retraction request only obfuscated the issue. In the end, yes, I've made a mistake here, which --- if not corrected --- could have cost each owner approximately $25 over a 1 year period. But on the same day I made that mistake, I corrected it immediately in a clarifying phone conversation with our rubbish contractor. You see in the e-mail trail that within just minutes of Alana Augustino's 17.06.13 mail "Cross Lease Sarawia - Current situation with Rubbish Collection Services", I have independently reported essentially the same result in outcome_17June.pdf.
What you also should see is the anti-democratic behaviour, in which Graham Smith attempted to stop a perfectly valid call for votes and the way BCA took sides in the dispute and complied with his wish.
When I finally reported that I was able to reach an absolute majority of votes by owners despite BCA's retraction notice and despite having been able to contact only 55 out of 65 apartment owners, Warrick Smith's immediate reply was to equate my understanding of democracy with that of Lenin/Stalin. I'm not sure what perception of democracy Warrick has as the most vocal proponent of the view that Owners Committee members should be subordinate to their self-imposed chief. The e-mail thread makes some entertaining reading.