Waratah Strata Management

One star is too much – Note to public: Waratah Strata Management has been approached many times over five years to act in accordance with laws. They persistently refused. Last time it was on 13 February 2022, where they received the following request: BEGIN QUOTE Approval to publish, in unredacted form, and without any personal comments (to avoid any theoretical… Read more

possibility of alleged defamation), any email and document that is related to you in regards to our large strata complex. The publishing can be in any media we prefer: newspapers, TV, online, owners in the complex, and so on. It is in public interest to know for obvious reasons.

Likewise, as asked by us many times before, any public information that you have grief with, please highlight with evidence why you object to it being published (within valid legal grounds), and your request will be addressed with care and reviewed promptly. You, like all other members of the committee and some owners, declined to do it over the last five years and instead attempted to incur costs through unnecessary litigations that eventually failed. END QUOTE

Few items (much more is available). Every statement is backed by evidence:

1. Minutes of Annual General Meeting on 19 October 2016 confirmed removal of BCS Strata Management and approved contract with Waratah Strata Management with base value of $21,800.00 and $13,300.00 for disbursements per year.

Contract with Waratah Strata Management was signed by two unfinancial owners who were illegal to vote and be committee members due to unpaid full levies for gas heating since 1999 and 2001 respectively (including 10% simple interest per year for overdue levies), and secretly increased base value from $21,800.00 to $23,110.00 without owners knowledge on 14 December 2016 and owners were never given this information.

Waratah Strata Management tried to argue that the total value of the contract stayed the same but that was not a valid defence because, by default, yearly increase of their contract of 5% applied to base value.

Copy of the contract has never been given to any owner and has not been published on Waratah's secure website.

2. Waratah Strata Management won the contract renewal without tender, without details of the contract, and without disclosure of the proposed value of the contract in the notice of the meeting: Annual General Meeting on 24 October 2017 failed to satisfy quorum and allowed 10 unfinancial owners to vote (of which three were elected on the committee in spite of unpaid full levies for gas heating).

Seven proxy votes were given to Waratah Strata Management Director, who voted for his own contract renewal.

One owner was misquoted in two places: on page 1 of the Minutes with one name and on page 2 listed as different name. Waratah Strata Management re fused to clarify it.

10 nominations were submitted for the committee membership and ballot was conducted on non-compliant forms. Contract with Waratah Strata Management was signed by two unfinancial owners who could not prove they were financial owners on the same evening when the meeting was conducted and increased base value to $24,310.00.

Waratah Strata Management won the contract renewal without tender and without disclosure of the proposed value of the contract in the notice of the meeting: Annual General Meeting on 24 October 2017 failed to satisfy quorum and allowed 10 unfinancial owners to vote (of which three were elect ed on the committee in spite of unpaid full levies for gas heating).

Copy of the contract has never been given to any owner and has not been published on Waratah's secure website.

3. Waratah Strata Management won the contract renewal without tender, without details of the contract, and without disclosure of the proposed value of the contract in the notice of the meeting: Annual General Meeting on 17 October 2019 failed to satisfy quorum and allowed 10 unfinancial owners to vote (of which three were elected on the committee in spite of unpaid full levies for gas heating).

4. Waratah Strata Management failed to disclose to owners that the full contract with painting company was in amount of $630,846.00 (including GST).

Waratah Strata Management failed to disclose to owners the following breakdown of expenses for the painting project that they were aware of as early as 3 March 2017:

Block A: $117,700.00 (including GST) Block B: $117,700.00 (including GST) Block C: $117,700.00 (including GST) Block D: $117,700.00 (including GST) Various Structures: $66,000.00 (including GST) Townhouses: $92,950.00 (including GST)

Total cost: $629,750.00 (including GST).

Motion 3 in the Minutes of EC meeting held on 20 July 2017 shows that around half of the project cost having been paid to date. Allegedly three quotes from another service provider to carry out remedial repairs required prior to painting were accepted at a total cost of $27,580.00. No details of the "remedial repairs", and no evidence or statements about multiple quotes being sought from different providers were provided to any owner.

Motion 3 in the Minutes of EC meeting held on 28 September 2017 shows that the painting project was complete and all accounts had been paid except the 5% retention amounts totalling $28,187.00 + GST.

No details of the total costs, warranties, and other details were provided to owners.

Agenda for the AGM 2017 sent to owners contained information that the total costs for the painting project were $646,200.00 plus GST (totalling $710.820.000).

Waratah Strata Management listed total costs in the Agenda for AGM 2017 on page 25 (Capital Works Fund) as $610.357,26 (plus GST). If one adds figure of $28,187.00 (retention amount of 5% as per Motion 3 in Minutes of EC meeting held on 28 September 2017), it totals $638,544.00 (plus GST).

Since 2018, lot of extra work has done because the major upgrades were poor, incomplete, unprofessionally done, and at extra costs to owners. Garden beds are just one of good examples.

Waratah Strata Management refuses to provide full evidence of the scope of work, warranties, including evidence for townhouses. Otherwise, we have around $92,950.00 (including GST) which are missing in owners corporation funds, or was spent elsewhere without owners corporation knowledge or approval.

5. Financials:

Balance Status on 17 October 2019, Admin Fund had negative balance of $131,852.25 on the day of general meeting. Trying to prevent owners to raise questions about finance and maintenance, Waratah Strata Management and committee members "approved" $150,000.00 to be spent on defamation case against two owners (which failed to achieve their goal), without giving owners information that Waratah Strata Management and committee members already engaged who had prepared 11-page document before the AGM and tried to force the owners into signing preposterous Deed. In financial statements for FY 2020, in spite of extensive legal involvement, Waratah Strata Management logged only $2,940.00 for legal costs.

Balance Status on 31 October 2021, Admin Fund had negative balance of $120,210.65 (one day before next collection of levies on 1 November 2021). This negative balance was extremely opposite from what Waratah Strata Management listed just three days earlier, on the day of general meeting on 28 October 2021 without disclosure to owners, Admin Fund has alleged balance of $1,019.14 (three days before next collection of levies on 1 November 2021) .

Balance Status on 29 January 2021, Admin Fund negative balance of $18,859.76.

Balance Status on 25 April 2021, Admin Fund negative balance of $24,560.03.

Balance Status on 31 July 2021, Admin Fund negative balance of $22,323.34.

Balance Status on 8 December 2021, Admin Fund holding just $1,263.46 (close to two months before next collection of levies is due on 1 February 2022) .

Balance Status on 24 December 2021, Admin Fund has negative balance of $49,429.69 (more than one month before next collection of levies is due on 1 February 2022) .

Balance Status on 7 January 2022, Admin Fund has negative balance of $53,036.39 (one month before next collection of levies is due on 1 February 2022) .

Balance Status on 19 January 2022, Admin Fund has negative balance of $112,530.07 (11 days before next collection of levies is due on 1 February 2022) .

Balance Status on 30 January 2022, Admin Fund has negative balance of $116,068.14 (2 days before next collection of levies is due on 1 February 2022) .

6. Minutes of committee meeting on 23 September 2021 - shortage of $1,515,541.00 in Capital Works Fund against the forecast in April 2017 that was allegedly approved without general meeting. Annual general meeting was held on 28 October 2021, and no owner received email or printed copy of rushed updates to Capital Works Fund which simply delayed all major repairs, effectively made balance looked artificially positive. Agenda for AGM 2021 was dispatched on 7 October 2021 and BIV's updated Capital Works Fund plan was created a day earlier but not presented to owners corporation to approve or vote at general meeting on 28 October 2021.

7. Waratah Strata Management failed to comply with fire and OH&S safety regulations multiple times over last five years.

NSW Fire Safety case FRN16/829 Job BFS19/749, BSF16/666, and BFS20/252 are examples of such events.

8. Five months after Core Consulting Engineers presented fire engineering report to Waratah Strata Management on 7 October 2021, which was not provided to owners or even discussed at general meeting on 28 October 2021, notice for committee meeting on 3 March 2022 which was not sent to all owners (Lot 158 did not receive any notice of meetings for three years), included the report, BUT did not include any details of annual fire safety audit for 2022 (of special interest are number of owners whose smoke alarms are older than 10 years - in October 2021, two owners forced owners corporation to replace both of them in each unit).

9. Waratah Strata Management alleges they suffered ransomware attack in February 2019, with outcome that lot of strata files and records were lost for multiple complexes.

Australian Cyber Security Centre Report CIRS-20190810-40: Events and evidence related to alleged ransomware attack on Waratah Strata Management computers and data losses in February 2019 (based on limited access to files, we believe that at least three other strata complexes experienced data losses).

Waratah Strata Management failed to offer assistance and co-operation with Australian Cyber Security Centre report CIRS-20190810-40 in relation to alleged ransomware attack on Waratah Strata Management computers in February 2019.

It took Waratah Strata Management six weeks to report data losses to owners and three and half months to report it Fair Trading NSW.

Waratah Strata Management declined to provide details of any insurance claims and Police reports.

Owners were not informed about an unknown third-party paying Bitcoin ransom to the threat actor in amount of $5,052.03.

Owners were not given copy of Sententia’s ransomware attack, which has many holes with dubious statements.

Written confirmations from Microsoft about alleged email and strata file losses (including invoices) in Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure shows that Microsoft was not notified about them when the event allegedly happened (at least that is their statement). Even more, had anybody notified Microsoft about email losses, they had capability to restore files within 90 days.

Sententia report on alleged ransomware attack commissioned in March 2019 did not mention any data losses in Office 365 and Microsoft Azure and was not disclosed to owners.

Written statement was obtained from Rockend who confirmed that they provide lookatmystrata.com.au domain but they do not store, hold, access, or release any information related to that domain. All such information is held and managed by Waratah Strata Management.

There are multiple versions of ransomware attack that Waratah Strata Management presented to different parties (which do not match).

Waratah Strata Management was repeatedly asked for evidence of their statements - they silently declined.

10. For five years, Waratah Strata management failed to inform owners about insurance policy enforcing $10,000.00 excess for every water damage or burst pipe due to continuous problems in the complex since year 2012.

11. The following tenders were disallowed for competing for strata and building management contracts at AGM 2020 without valid reasons.

Three very competitive quotes for building management contract:

Curtis Strata Cleaning Forte Asset Services Clean and Secure Building Management

All three of them offered two options for security services with licensed staff:

Patrols two times a night in around 30 minute duration each time, Full 10-hour a night onsite security.

The reason for option with patrols:

All fire doors in the basement in the complex now have alarms, New CCTV system.

Very competitive quote from Jim's Mowing franchise for gardening.

Three very competitive quotes for the strata management contract:

Strata Excellence Strata Title Management Netstrata

As reference, current yearly costs for building management are in vicinity of around $350.000.00.

And much more.