The new councillors at Weddin Shire Council were sworn in at their extraordinary meeting on Tuesday, October 8. Councillor Paul Best was elected, unopposed as Mayor, with Councillor Colleen Gorman elected as Deputy Mayor. They will serve as Mayor and Deputy Mayor for a two year period. Upon being elected as Weddin Shire Mayor at the extraordniary meeting, Councillor Best said he would like to congratulate all the councillors on their election and thanked them for the honour of serving as the mayor. Cr Best took a moment to recognize and thank the former mayor Craig Bembrick for his hard work, leadership and friendship over the last term which has set a really strong Foundation up for this new Council. Cr Best also thanked the previous coucillors and candidates who ran for the election, thanking them for their passion for and commitment to the community. Moving forward, the first thing on the agenda, Cr Best said, is completing all of the things left to do from the previous Council including the festoon lighting in the Mian street, toilet blocks at the cemetery, an inclusive playground at Taylor Park and completing millions of dollars worth of road works to be completed once the funding becomes available. "We're two years down the track and we still haven't got all of our packages of funding from the state government to fix our roads," he said. Cr Best he initial priority for the first twelve months is to complete all of those projects and get the roads back in a good situation. Without the funding, the situation is getting worse and roads aren't getting better, Cr Best said, but they have had a really good community who have put up with it so far. "Without that funding we can't do anything about it, and one of my thigs with this Council is we've got to look at the process because it is broken," he said. "We shouldn't be two years down the track from a major flooding event and still have roads that haven't been repaired." "With the Bureau of Meteorology telling us these events are going to be more frequent, we've got to get that process right," he said. Cr Best said they need to look at pushing the state government to change those processes and that local councils can't do it on their own. With seven new faces on council, Cr Best said they will provide a lot of new points of view, new ideas, new focusses and new energy which would be good. Cr Colleen Gorman said there is a lot of enthusiasm amongst the new councillors and they are all keen to get going. "We're all here for the right reasons, we love Grenfell and want to give it a go and are determined to do our best," she said. Cr Best said he came forward as a candidate for Mayor as he has a fair amount of prior experience serving on Council and thought that could help. Cr Gorman said before the election, a majority of people she spoke with in Weddin wanted an experienced person serving as Mayor. As for putting her hand up for Deputy Mayor, Cr Gorman said that was not initially on the agenda and was just pleased and excited to be elected, but put her hand up when a couple other councillors suggested she put her hand up for the position.
