October 2011 usage statistics

An overall view of traffic on this website last month.

Anonymous has a sense of humour!

Who would have guessed that someone so petty and cowardly also has a sense of humour?

Although, I do have to wonder what the reaction might have been had I illustrated one of my signs with something so obscene and exemplary of abuse to animals as an image of someone inserting their finger into the anus of a cat. But that’s totally acceptable, while a sign advertising a community service is not.

So I’ve left up Anonymous’ “no cat farts” sign, and put up yet another replacement sign. This “game” is getting a little old, but I have a new printer and a good stock of paper, so I’ll keep “playing” with the anonymous busybody with nothing better to do.

Big ass crane

If you missed the crane … it’s OK, I took some pictures for you. I missed the make-up air unit being hoisted onto the roof though. Sorry.

Make-up air unit replacement

This afternoon Strataco delivered a letter (dated 31 October) informing us that the make-up air unit will be replaced by Honeywell tomorrow, 2 November, starting at 07:30. The crane will be arriving at 09:00 and delivering the unit from West 2nd Avenue. I don’t know what it’s like on other floors, but we’re looking forward to not having a frigid hallway outside our front door!

There’s no indication how long the work will take, but I suspect that West 2nd will be blocked while the crane is there, and entering and leaving the building on foot might have to take place via the parkade if there is work overhead of the main entrance on West 2nd. Make sure you look up! 🙂

How to enforce by-laws and rules

Back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

One of the things I want to do on this website is highlight some of the excellent instruction guides on the Financial Institutions Commission website and how they apply to Trinity Place at the moment. There are 28 of these guides, and given the nonsense surrounding the petty removal of signs recently, it seems appropriate that I start with the seven-page Guide 14: How to Enforce Bylaws and Rules.

We have some experience with this, actually, as it took about a year and a half for Council to work through all of the legal requirements to enforce noise by-laws against an Owner who, for all of that time and much before the formal complaint, seemed to have no interest in complying with the Strata Plan LMS 2833 Bylaws (hereinafter referred to as simply Bylaws) and just kept paying fines. He eventually seemed to tire of paying the fines though, as he bizarrely sued the Strata Corporation in Small Claims Court in a ill-advised effort to have the Court rescind not only the fines, but lien charges and a special assessment that was to pay RDH to compile their engineering report in 2010.

Compare that situation to the one we have now where some anonymous vigilante is taking it upon him/herself to enforce their interpretation of the Bylaws, therefore, in the process, attempting to circumvent the due process mandated by the Bylaws, the Strata Property Act, the spirit (if not the letter) of just about every Canadian law, and good, common sense! The irony is rich.

So what does this guide have to say about enforcing by-laws and rules? After stating the obvious in section 1 (owners, tenants and people living with or visiting owners and tenants must comply with by-laws and rules), the guide moves onto section 2:

How to Process Complaints of Alleged Bylaw and Rule Violations

The following steps should be taken by parties in dealing with complaints of alleged bylaw and rule violations:

• the aggrieved party complaining of a bylaw or rule breach by another owner or tenant must make a complaint to the strata council;
• the strata council must then give the alleged bylaw or rule offender written notice of the complaint;

That’s a good start. One should actually make a formal complaint to the Strata Council, not take matters into one’s own hands. Continuing:

• if the strata council decides to proceed with enforcement, it must give the alleged offender a reasonable opportunity to respond to the complaint, including an opportunity to respond at a hearing, if requested. The Regulations define hearing as “an opportunity to be heard in person at a council meeting”;

Seems in line with the kind of justice one expects in a nation such as Canada. In the case of our noise complaint, the offender was actually asked by Council to appear at a Council meeting, but (as I understand it) did not even respond to that invitation.

So much for processing complaints. The guide goes on to talk about enforcement options in section 3. If Council determines that a by-law has been breached, it may (but is not obliged to) impose a fine against an owner or tenant, and re-impose a fine. The Standard Bylaws permit a fine of up to $50 for a by-law infraction, although strata corporations are allowed to pass by-laws imposing fines of up to $200 in the case of a by-law infraction other than a rental restriction by-law (for which the maximum is set at $500). The Trinity Place Bylaws take advantage of this ceiling, allowing for fines of up to $200.

Both the Standard Bylaws and the Trinity Place Bylaws allow for fines to be re-imposed every seven days, although in the case of our noise complaint they were not re-imposed that often. In fact, had they been, the fines for a year and a half of non-compliance would have added up to almost $16 000! That might have settled the issue sooner, but wow, what a price to pay for stubbornness.

Back to that little word “may”. In law, as I understand it, the word “may” does not obligate certain action or inaction on the part of the party to whom the statement is directed. So, in this case, a strata council is allowed to (may) allow the offending party to correct or bring their behaviour into compliance with the law or by-law in question, rather than impose a fine. This certainly makes sense from a practical point of view.

The guide goes on in section 4 to indicate that by-laws cannot be enforced if they “contravene the [Strata Property] Act, [Strata Property] Regulations, Human Rights Code or another enactment or law”. This should be obvious. A strata corporation cannot, for example, pass a by-law allowing only men to sit on the strata council! And my contention is that the sign I have posted and re-posted on the notice board is a matter of free speech, something guaranteed by section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms … a little “enactment of law” that is kinda bigger and more important than the Trinity Place Bylaws!

Section 5 of the guide covers methods that can be used by a strata corporation to collect fines and costs if the offending party does not pay them of their own volition. These methods include suing the owner (after two weeks’ notice demanding payment), initiating collection action (just as if you don’t pay your credit card bill) after a court order against the offending party has been obtained, proceeding to arbitration, or refusing to issue a “Form F” (Certificate of Payment) to an owner or the purchaser of the owner’s strata lot.

Section 6 is actually on a topic that could have its own guide dedicated to it, as it is referred to in several of the guides: giving notice and calculating the notice period. In fact, I have already referred to this in stating that I believe that Strataco did not provide enough legal notice for the 29 September SGM. I will, in fact, dedicate another post to this topic.

The final section (section 7) deals with enforcement against tenants, and mentions that the Residential Tenancy Act also applies when dealing with tenants. An owner renting his strata lot must provide a tenant with a “Form K” (Notice of Tenant’s Responsibilities), a copy of the by-laws, and a copy of the rules. The owner must then give the signed copy of the Form K to the strata corporation. Other than that, a strata corporation may fine or seek costs from an owner for the actions of a tenant, but if the owner pays those fines or costs the tenant is still responsible to pay those fines or costs to the owner. And finally, a “strata corporation may be able to evict a residential tenant who repeatedly breaches reasonable and significant bylaw[s] or rules, if there is serious interference with the rights of other persons in the strata development.”

That’s it for this guide. What has been your experience at Trinity Place with enforcing by-laws and rules? Tell us in the comments section below.

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Spelling note: I use “by-law” because neither my Canadian nor British dictionaries even mention a spelling without the hyphen. However, when I’m quoting something that doesn’t use the hyphen I, of course, quote exactly, and don’t bother with [sic].

Legal note: I am not a lawyer, and the foregoing does not constitute legal advice.

Anonymous commenting allowed

In order to accommodate those who feel the need to remain anonymous and to get some voices heard here other than my own, I have removed the requirement to sign up in order to post comments on existing posts. So even the anonymous sign stealer may now comment here without revealing their identity.

Ultimately, of course, I would like to see civilised discourse here amongst people who care about Trinity Place, and “civilised” means non-anonymous. Why would one feel the need to be anonymous if they only have something constructive to say?

But that’s just my opinion. What’s yours? Tell us below. The software that runs this site automatically includes the name and email fields, but you can leave them blank.

Speak your mind.

Anonymous strikes again!

I’m all in favour of dissent. Really! Even if I wasn’t, I’ve written nothing on this website that would indicate that I don’t tolerate other points of view.

But I can’t debate with a shadow, and in this case the shadow is the anonymous person that has a bee in his or her bonnet about the sliver of paper on the notice board about this website.

First this person just took down the notices. Then he/she took down the notice and made up a rule about the use of the notice board. Now he/she has taken down the sign and — rather ironically — replaced it with another sign referring to a “designated bulletin board” (which, apparently, didn’t exist last week in his/her mind) and quoting the Bylaws, and in so doing has appointed him/herself the Trinity Place by-law enforcer. Can it get any more ludicrous?

So here we go:

Dear Anonymous:

I applaud your efforts to police Trinity Place. Without you there would be chaos. However, I can quote laws and by-laws as well as you — as I have done on the latest replacement sign because you won’t come out of the shadows and debate me in a more logical forum than the notice board.

If I receive a written directive from Council that they have rescinded the unrestricted (in terms of length of time) permission granted to me to post a notice about this website, and that directive is accompanied by the minutes of the meeting where that is decided, I will respect that decision pending further action to challenge it. (And challenge it I will.) But if the sign goes to a vote, and if my understanding of my discussions with some members of Council are correct, then the vote will at least be close. If permission is rescinded without a vote, then … well … that will actually only serve to confirm certain things that I’m already concerned about.

As alluded to in my latest rebuttal of your actions, I consider this a free speech issue. The sign is not advertising a bicycle that I had for sale six months ago. The sign advertises an existing and ongoing forum where Owners and residents can engage in free speech related to Trinity Place, the building where all of us have collectively invested millions of dollars in our homes. The fact that the sign continues to be relevant and still exists is no different to including your company name and address on every letter you send. Your correspondents already know the address, but you include it anyway. Similarly, most Owners and residents know this website exists but, like anyone (especially when it comes to ephemeral websites), we need reminding occasionally. Why do you think Coca-Cola still spends millions of dollars on advertising a product everyone already knows about?

So, once again, I applaud your concern for the unrestricted posting of notices around Trinity Place. I invite you to summon your courage and post your thoughts and opinions here. Go ahead. I know you can do it if you try.

Craig Hartnett

Clarification from EXP on their earlier Additional Investigations Report

On Wednesday, 26 October, Strataco delivered a package containing the following to the door:

• A 1-page cover letter from the Strata Corporation dated 24 October 2011 and signed by Kim Sheldon, Strata Council President,
• A 15-page Additional Investigations Report — Building Envelope report from EXP dated 29 September 2011,
  • Copies of this were already given to those who requested one at the 29 September SGM, and I haven’t included it in the PDF copy of the package delivered 26 October.
• A 3-page Clarification for Additional Investigations Report letter from EXP.

First, I hate to be a grammar nazi, but the new report clarifies a somewhat confusing 7-page report by cramming more grammatical errors than were in that report into a 3-page report. I know that EXP are engineers and not English majors, but for a few hundred thousand dollars you’d think they could have someone edit their reports. But I digress.

By my reading this doesn’t change much. There were questions after the first report about exactly where, on the north end of the east wall, moisture was found. The “clarification” doesn’t get that specific except to say that the testing was conducted at the “window sill locations at the EIFS trims.” In short, testing showed some “water ingress” but “no deterioration of the wood components at the exploratory openings … [and] no visible deterioration of the sheathing … at the exploratory opening location.” Further, EXP says that “it is our opinion that there is likely no current systemic deterioration of the exterior wall assembly.”

Further testing will be conducted, and testing will be ongoing (“… this portion of the exterior wall assembly [should be] periodically monitored and adequately maintained”) if we choose to stick with what was voted on at the 29 September SGM — i.e., not to do any work on the north end of the east wall at this time. If Owners would like to revisit their decision, apparently the option to include the north end of the east wall in the current project (at extra expense, of course) is available until 31 January 2012 — although, as yet, there is no SGM scheduled at which we might vote on this.

On a slightly different but related topic, I note the following quote from the clarification report:

However, for the benefit of the building and the Owners, exp issued a letter report dated: September 29th, 2011, to ensure the Strata makes an informed decision. Regretfully the report was issued on the day of the SGM, which we acknowledge might not have provided adequate opportunity for all the Owners to review.

While EXP claims that “it was not exp’s intention to provide a report for the additional investigations conducted”, I don’t recall them saying that and I can’t imagine any Owners would not have expected a written report to complement the written reports we’d already received from Dubas Engineering and RDH. Be that as it may, the submitting of a report on the day of the SGM at which we were to vote on this crucial project is the direct result of poor management and abysmal communication on the part of Strataco and the Strata Council.

Several times between the SGM on 17 February (at which we voted to proceed with the supposedly 4-month pre-construction phase) and mid-September (7 months later) I appealed to Strataco and members of Council for information about what was happening. Each time I was either ignored or told that “there is nothing to report”. Written updates during that period amounted to one memo dedicated to what was happening, and a few very vague sentences in the minutes of Council meetings. Then, around the middle of September, there was a flurry of activity and reams of paper delivered to us, all with the bare minimum of notice legally required for an SGM. (Actually, going by postmarks, the earliest legal date [under sections 45 (1) and 61 (3) of the Strata Property Act and section 25 (4) of the Interpretation Act] for the SGM was 1 October, not 29 September.) On 29 September I also received, at the tail end of the flood of paper and in reply to several emails over the previous months, an incoherent letter from Strataco asking me “to exercise a certain amount of patience and understand[ing]”!

The bare minimum of notice and the holding of the information meeting only eight days before the SGM meant that it was impossible for any Owners to examine any documents and provide feedback on the agenda of the SGM. It also made it impossible for any Owners to point out the fact that things like the EXP report were missing. Had Strataco and Council meaningfully kept Owners in the loop throughout the pre-construction phase and during the period between the pre-construction phase and the September SGM, we’d have all benefited from the extra oversight that all of our observations would have provided. As it was, we were treated like mushrooms, and then the avalanche of paperwork in the middle of September was supposed to make up for it. I don’t think so. Certainly in my eyes it didn’t.

Website notice on notice board

Twice in the last three weeks or so since this website was set up, someone has removed the small notice I have place on the notice board in the parkade vestibule by the elevator. Today there was a handwritten notice in its place which read as follows:

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS NOTICE BOARD IS RESERVED FOR INFORMATION ON THE BUILDING REHABILITATION.

I don’t know who placed this notice (and removed mine), but I believe this person is misinformed, and therefore ask him/her to stop removing notices that he/she has no authority to remove.

Frankly, I don’t know why someone would remove the notice unless he/she is opposed to the existence of this website, and I don’t know why someone would be opposed to this website because it exists as a service to the Trinity Place community. It’s supposed to bring us together, not have us waging petty battles over a sign on a notice board. If you’re opposed to the existence of this website, that’s just fine; you’re entitled to your opinion. However, that doesn’t give you the right to try to squelch the opinions and activities of others. You do, however, have the right to voice your opinion to the community, and you can do so right here, on this website. (Where else can you do that without waiting for an annual general meeting?) Please read the instructions, register, and then post your views here so that we can discuss them as civilised, educated human beings.

As it says on the latest replacement notice that I have posted on the notice board, the posting of the notice informing Owners and residents of the (ongoing) existence of this website was approved by Strataco Management Ltd. at the special general meeting on 29 September when this issue was raised under “other business”. (Unfortunately, minutes have still not been issued, so I can’t quote chapter and verse on that yet.) Unless or until I receive notice otherwise — and again, I have no reason to believe I will or should receive notice otherwise — the notice is entitled to be there. This notice board has existed since before the current rehabilitation project and was and is used for communicating information other than that related to this project. We have only one official venue for such notices — a point that was made at the 29 September SGM as I had originally posted notices in three locations — so removal of notices from that single location leaves no other place to post such notices.

Thank-you for respecting the rights and concerns of your neighbours.

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Updated 2011-10-23: Add point that notice board has been there for some time, so was not put there for one purpose only.

Uploaded more documents

In keeping with the goals of this website, I have uploaded some more documents so that they’re easily available for all Owners and residents. Unfortunately, because they’re all scans, they are not searchable because they are essentially images, not text documents. I would hope and expect that as this website grows and improves, such documents will become available in text-based, searchable format.

Here is what I have just added:

• By-laws,
• Most recent finances,
• Strata plan for the fourth floor (feel free to contribute a copy of your floor), and
• Project information from John Williamson Inc.

• Recent Posts

  • Website to close
  • Report 3 (Williamson): Building Remedial Report
  • Report 2 (Williamson): Building Remedial Report
  • Council deigns to acknowledge website
  • Privacy policy updated

• Recent Comments

  • Anonymous on Interphone
  • Connie on Make-up air unit replacement
  • C.A. on Noise and being neighbourly
  • Anonymous on Notification 2 (New City): Project Start
  • CraigH on Make-up air unit replacement

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