Council met, council voted and council retained Mayor Bronwyn Petrie as mayor at last week's 'first' meeting of the new post-election council. Cr Greg Sauer duly took his post as her deputy in what was little surprise to onlookers, but there was one empty chair to add a spark of surprise to proceedings. Cr Peter Petty managed to miss the first meeting of the new Tenterfield Shire Council last week after getting the dates confused and committing to another meeting elsewhere.
Despite the absence, and despite the gloom of financial woes hanging over the shire’s budget pressuring every decision they will make this term, the new group of politicians held an upbeat and smooth gathering.
The meeting started with the newly elected taking the oath of office and acknowledgement that Cr Petty would have to do so at the next meeting. Cr Peter Murphy questioned whether the next meeting was within the three-week time limit in which oaths must be undertaken to be told by manager Hein Basson that it is a three-month time period allowing Cr Petty adequate scope to make his promises to the people of Tenterfield.
The next item of business was the decision to have a deputy mayor, for how long, and whether the vote would be by show of hands or secret ballot. Councillors decided on the ballot method and a two-year term for the deputy position. Since there were no other nominations for mayor, Mr Basson said it gave him pleasure to present Cr Petrie with the role. The Mayor thanked Mr Basson, the public and her colleagues and moved from her seat on the side to the head of the table to chair the meeting.
Cr Sauer thanked his colleagues and the public for their “vote of confidence” and commented that he treats it “as an honour and a privilege” to act as deputy mayor.
Countback or By-election?
The first order of business was to decide the method of replacing a councillor who might have to resign during the term of office. Councillors considered adopting a countback system which uses the ballot papers of the previous election to determine a second-place candidate to fill a councillor’s vacancy. The benefit of such a system is that it saves the cost of holding a by-election and council having to foot the costs of having the NSW Electoral Commission do the job.
However, Councillors were not in favour. The Deputy Mayor spoke against the recommendation saying that in his career the instances of having a vacancy while rare, can and do happen, and to fill a vacancy with previous candidates who were not elected by a significant number of residents would give a “free pass” to serve the rest of that term. Cr Sauer recommended a by-election instead.
Cr Murphy agreed saying that with a countback system the one certainty was that someone who wasn’t elected would “get in” with possibly very few votes which is neither “right or fair”. “I can’t see any safeguards,” agreed Cr Owen Bancroft, enjoying his first meeting as a councillor for Tenterfield Shire. “I don’t like this idea.”
Councillors voted unanimously not to exercise the motion to adopt a countback scheme in case of a vacancy.
Shaking up the schedule?
Cr Kim Rhodes consulted the chamber about the possibility of holding at least some council meetings in late afternoon or evening hours, allowing more members of the public to participate. Mayor Petrie explained that since some councillors have to travel long distances to Tenterfield and would be forced to find overnight accommodation for evening meetings that it wasn’t practical to change.
The mayor sympathised with the public and promised that “it’s something we could potentially explore” in the future but then asked the general manager why no regional meetings were on the roster. Councillors were informed of two major stumbling blocks to having meetings in villages like Legume and Liston. Firstly, council has extremely limited resources to staff these meetings and, more importantly, there is inadequate internet signal to live stream the meetings which is a state requirement.Councillors murmured over the conundrum.
Cr Murphy pointed out that at one village meeting there were sixteen councillors/staff in attendance and only three members of the public.
Cr Tim Bonner commented that he supports holding regional meetings to prevent council from being “town-focused”. As far as the legislation for live streaming, perhaps a relaxation could be sought or parameters eased. The mayor suggested putting off any decision on the matter until further investigation and public consultation could be conducted.
Before closing the meeting, Mayor Petrie acknowledged the councillors who “stuck it out” during the last term given the range of pressures and commended them on their accomplishments including water for the villages, dealing with rates, retaining ownership of the airport, reorganising council staff. She also thanked council staff with a nod to the difficulty of the recent layoffs.
