FORMER mayor Colin Price has said he is not angry with those that plotted against him in last Thursday's Glen Innes Severn council deputy mayoral vote.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Four councillors took part in a last minute decision at last week’s council meeting to prevent Cr Price from holding a leadership position on the new council.
Cr Price said he was not angry at the decision and once it was declared Cr Sparks was running against him he expected to be toppled.
“I am not angry at all, that is politics,” he said.
“Not being deputy mayor does not mean that I can’t show leadership within the community and I will continue to work hard for the betterment of the shire as I have always done.”
Cr Price said he takes great pride in the achievements of the last council and will stand by the decisions that were made.
“All the people who want to say the last council did a bad job forget that unlike a lot of council’s around us we were deemed fit for the future and were saved from amalgamation because the state government recognised the work we as a council had done and the hard decisions that weren’t popular that we had to make,’ he said.
Cr Price said he hoped the new council could work together for the next four years.
“The majority of the people involved in what happened last Thursday night all said they wanted cohesion on the new council whilst they were campaigning for election,” he said.
“It will be interesting to see if that can be achieved because the cohesion they spoke of lasted all but half an hour at the first council meeting.”
New deputy mayor Carol Sparks has attempted to soothe any raw nerves that might have arisen from the surprise result at last Thursday’s council meeting by paying tribute to the former mayor.
“The previous council and mayoral team did vital work to ensure financial stability for the Shire, enabling its stand-alone status to continue under the NSW Government’s stringent new ‘Fit for the Future’ requirements,” she said.
“It’s important to acknowledge that the previous council made some difficult decisions to ensure that Glen Innes-Severn could continue to stand alone, and not be forced into a possible amalgamation with neighbouring Councils.
“The best tribute I can make as a new deputy is to preserve the value of the work from our former mayor.”