The strata secretary’s job, in plain terms
Most secretaries inherited the role at a kitchen table with no handover. Here is the whole job on one page, and where the shortcuts are.
The secretary keeps the strata corporation's memory. Everything else the council does, the budget, the repairs, the enforcement, becomes real and provable through records the secretary maintains. It is volunteer work with statutory deadlines, which is an odd combination, and the reason this page exists.
The recurring duties
| Duty | The rule behind it |
|---|---|
| Minutes of every council meeting, distributed to owners within 2 weeks, approved or not | Standard Bylaw 19; s. 35 requires minutes with vote results |
| Minutes of AGMs and SGMs | s. 35 |
| Custody of the records list: minutes, correspondence, contracts, insurance, reports | s. 35, retention periods in Reg 4.1 (minutes at least 6 years) |
| Producing records when owners or authorized buyers ask | s. 36: within 2 weeks |
| Meeting notices with the right notice periods | s. 45: at least 2 weeks for general meetings |
| Correspondence in and out, filed where the next secretary can find it | s. 35 again |
The secretary is not required to produce transcripts, record debates, or attribute opinions. Decisions and vote results, in plain English, are the standard. Anything more is extra work that creates privacy risk.
A sustainable weekly rhythm
The job is light if it is done immediately and heavy if it is batched. The sustainable pattern: write the minutes the same evening as the meeting while memory is fresh (our minute-taking guide shows the during-meeting shorthand that makes this a 30-minute task), send them as a draft inside the two-week window, file the month's correspondence in the shared folder, and reuse last month's agenda as the skeleton for the next one.
The handover binder
Secretaries change; the corporation's memory must not. Keep a one-page index that says where everything lives: the shared folder link, the paper binder location, the registered bylaws, the insurance broker, the Resend-style list of owner email addresses for notices. The test of a good secretary is that their successor needs an afternoon, not a season, to take over.
When the pen is the problem
Every duty in the table stays with the corporation even when no volunteer wants it. The minutes are the one piece that can be lifted off the secretary almost entirely: send us the rough notes after each meeting and a complete, compliant document comes back with a checklist attached, usually within minutes. That is the whole product, and the first meeting is free.
Let us handle the minutes themselves
StrataMinutes turns your council's rough notes into complete, professionally formatted minutes that meet the requirements of the Strata Property Act, usually within minutes. Every document comes with a compliance checklist.
No payment details needed for your first council meeting.
This page is general information for BC strata councils, not legal advice. See the current text of the Strata Property Act and the Strata Property Regulation on BC Laws.
Related guides
Minute-Taking Guide
Minutes Template
Records Retention
Meeting Agenda