AGM Voting - Abstaining?

Can anyone advise how a vote to abstain (usually done in protest) is counted at a general meeting?

We have been notified without any advance warning of an EGM on an important and expensive matter.

There is no acceptable option on the agenda.

Help would be most appreciated - Thank you very much

 The extraordinary general meetings need to be called with enough time to inform all parties interested. 

Do you have any item in the Estatutes regarding timing for non residents to come and attend? If not, this would be advisable and for this time, you could send notification to the Administrator/ President ( whoever has called the extraordinary meeting) declaring there is not enough time for you to attend and asking for a postponement.

If not agreed this time, I will ask proxys and will start thinking about specifying on the Estatutes on  call timimg for the meetings.

Horizontal Property Act is an old law from 1960 which has been partially reformed in two ocassions but thet still have lots of matters that are left to the will of owners. These matters need to be decided and reflected on the Estatutes.

Of course the fundamental right to private property and linked faculties to decide on matters regarding your property needs to alo be taken into first account as the limit to decissions on commun matters of the group of owners which may affect you right to private property.

Not easy in many occassions. 

Without more specific information it's difficult to answer your question, other than to say if you abstain you surely have not voted one way or the other, therefore no "vote" is counted?

Have a careful read through the Horizontal Property Law, in particular Sections 11/2 and 11/3, and section 17. You may find your answer there.

Thank you for the replies - perhaps it might help if I gave the background to the situation.

We are a community 81 apartments sharing some common service such as electricity distribution with  another community of 30 large villa.

We attend the combined AGM with a 24% coefficient - THEY have the balance of the %.

There was a proposal 7 years ago to carry out the work and share the costs equally between each of the 81+30 properties.

The move to share the costs by our relative coefficients (24:76) was defeated as their large coefficient comfortably exceeded our.

Time passed by and our arguments for a coefficient to payments share - the usual we understand - were discarded until now when the project has been reared its ugly head again.

The cost of the project has increased from about 54000€ to a frightening 160000€. The project is completely different to the original proposals and we have not been given sight of the project documents.

The payment details included in the meeting call only show the sharing scheme by equal shares per dwelling and contains a serious error in the figure - being under-stated by 33%

This does seems very unfair and there is not even the opportunity to negotiate the issue as our president - of our 24% community - seems to have accepted the situation. An EGM has been called and the agenda does not include a vote on the basic cost sharing plan - to which we feel does not follow the usual coefficient - vote - pay.

Have we missed something - hence the rumble round the community to either ignore the meeting or attend or use a proxy to abstain.

Even more thanks if you help.

Isn't there something in the Horizontal Property Law that says if an amount larger than 3 months fees is demanded you can refuse to pay?

I'm not sure, but perhaps Maria can comment?

Horizontal- Laws pdf

for anyone wanting it

From my post (three down, for those who can be bothered to scroll):

"Have a careful read through the Horizontal Property Law, in particular Sections 11/2 and 11/3, and section 17. You may find your answer there".

For More:  I'm in fine fettle tonight.

I DO so  a man in fine fettle too.

Roberto,

Scroll down!

It seems a lot of posters on here don't even look and read the post below, leave alone scroll down and look at anything previous to that!

Now, what was it you were saying below!?!?!?!?!

Anyway, we abstained from voting on several issues at a previous AGM, as it would appear that if you do, and it concerns provisions you do not wish to enter into, use or be part of, then that is how you should vote, especially if it is a continuation of an agreement from a previous AGM that you were not a part of.

All I did was post Horizontal- Laws pdf again! I don't miss much even if many do  I've often decided many don't read the previous post let alone scroll further down. Makes me wonder if it's worth posting sometimes.  

More,

Eh! What???

I did not, and never would refer to you in my last statement, in such a manner as to berate anything of great importance, whether stated in any previous form or not, indeed any forethought of that manner, whether in a justifiable form or not,would be, and without any prejudice, past, present and future, not be malicious in any method, shape or form, and further, would not be forthright, justifiable or not, in any credence, and therefore,would not be forthcoming in any form of malice.

Now what were we talking about???

Now what were we talking about???

 Techno.

I was also agreeing with you, BTW!