One of the members of Glen Innes Severn Council has said it’s time for Steve Toms to be replaced as mayor by Carol Sparks, with Dianne Newman made her deputy.
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The mayor responded by saying he would be standing to keep the job: “I will be putting my hand up for the mayoral election”.
He now has a fight on his hands. Cr Andrew Parsons said: “I want to see a change.
“I like Carol. She’s a good person. She fights tooth and nail for things the community needs. It’s time we saw some ladies at the top.
And I would like to see Di Newman as deputy mayor.”
He said he thought such an all-female leadership would be a first in the council’s history (before or since the amalgamation between town and shire).
Another councillor, Glenn Frendon, said: “I think it’s time for a change. You can’t have one person having all the say.
“There’s a couple of people who could do a better job”, he said, without naming them.
The mayor’s job is up for selection at the end of this month. It’s not a vote by the broad electorate but decided by the seven members of the body in a public session.
Mayor Toms said: “My focus is on representing the overall best interests of our community, and I feel I’ve got the ability and knowledge to undertake that role.
“I think that what is important is that the council has a leader who is respected both within the council and externally”.
In recent months, the council has seemed permanently split four votes to three, with the mayor and Crs Colin Price and Jeff Smith on one side and the remaining four on the other.
Cr Smith declined to enter the argument over who should be mayor.
Cr Price said that people he talked to are “horrified and terrified” about the prospect of Carol Sparks becoming mayor.
“There’s a gulf in the difference of capacity between the two candidates in terms of understanding and dealing with complex issues”, he said.
“Cr Sparks struggles with the concept of working within a budget”.
He said that Cr Sparks’ membership of the Greens was a problem: “She’s a member of a political party and was elected as a member of a political party. It is against the total history of our community that there should be a person who may put the interests of her party in front of the interests of the community”.
Neither Cr Sparks nor Cr Newman responded to requests for comment.
