Story by Michael Bleby
Read Michael’s full story here
BYRON SHIRE goes to the polls this weekend and the outcome of the election will have a “huge” influence on the coastal town’s master plan, architect David Brown says.
According to the Australian Financial Review’s Michael Bleby, the last nine-member council, led by Greens mayor Simon Richardson, was hobbled after a fellow Greens councillor defected after the last election, siding with four conservative-leaning candidates.
Cr Richardson is running for mayor again, in a crowded race for the chain of office that pits him against his ex-Greens colleague Rose Wanchap, Country Labor’s Paul Spooner, conservative Alan Hunter and progressive Basil Cameron. The retirement of three former councillors has also opened up the race. There is a wider pool of candidates this time around than in 2012, with 36 in total vying for the nine seats including the mayoral one.
“Put crudely, it’s left versus right, but it’s far more subtle than that,” Brown says. “The next council will have a huge impact on the rollout of the master plan because it demands close attention and close involvement of councillors in its implementation. It would be very easy for some councillors to just cherry pick the parts of the plan that involve more unsympathetic building whereas another side of Council should think of the plan as a whole.”
Or as the local Byron Echo’s Michael McDonald puts it in his take on the candidates: “Some have form, some struggle when the going gets slippery and some are rank outsiders and unknowns.”