Dear Tony: We have several owners challenging our fees we charge for storage lockers, parking, extra parking spaces, and EV charging costs since a tribunal decision was issued a few weeks ago. The council have seriously reviewed our basic costs and admit some of the cost have no support and are too excessive, but others are justified. How do we evaluate the user fees we are imposing to determine if they are fair and reasonable?
Marco R. Surrey
Bylaws and rules of a strata corporation must comply with the Strata Property Act and Regulations, the BC Human Rights Code and any other enactment of law to be enforceable. Over time laws change, and this has the possibility of rendering bylaws and rules unenforceable.
The decision you are referring to is a strata corporation in White Rock that charged a user fee of $35 per month for charging without evaluating whether this was the effective amount. “It provided no evidence of relevant factors, such as average use, prevailing market conditions or of the costs that it incurs for EV charging,” the tribunal decision reads in part.
This may be fairly reasonable if a proper test had been applied in the creation and application of the user fees; however, residential strata corporations are not profit-creating organizations, so the intent is for the recovery of cost and administration.
The decision is a good wake up call for all strata corporations who are charging user fees for common property and facilities. Review your bylaws and rules, and question what is a reasonable cost.
Are there maintenance, insurance, utility or requirements that can be reasonably applied to cost recovery? Follow the regulations closely when creating language for rules and bylaws that impose user fees.
A strata corporation may impose user fees for the use of common property or common assets only if all of the following requirements are met: (a)the amount of the fee is reasonable; (b)the fee is set out (i)in a bylaw, or (ii)in a rule and the rule has been ratified by owners at a general meeting.
A user fee imposed by a strata corporation may be a fixed amount or an amount determined on a reasonable basis, including, but not limited to, the following: (a) the user’s rate of consumption; (b) the recovery of operating or maintenance costs by the strata corporation; (c)the number of users and (d)the duration of use.
Tony Gioventu is executive director of the Condominium Home Owners Association.
