Duncan Dey, Greens mayoral candidate
I’m standing for election as the next Mayor of Byron Council and wish to respond on one of the matters raised in [ITAL]The Echo’s editorial Comment of 30 June: the mayoral diary.
Making Council transparent is the best way of establishing trust. Talking about trust isn’t what makes it happen. The Byron Model was an attempt at that but went nowhere. Nor did Council’s proactive media endeavours.
There are many places where I’ll pursue transparency on Council. Recent Councils forgot that councillors are elected as our representatives. I’ll represent non-voters too, like people under 18. I’ll ask questions of ‘the machine’, rather than just present the machine’s choices to residents.
I was pre-selected in 2020 by Byron Greens on a platform of transparency. I promised the Greens then and I promise the Shire now that as Mayor, my diary will be public. If developers have reason to meet with me, the meetings will include Council staff and/or other councillors. I will not meet them solo. Topics and outcomes will be minuted.
I look forward to opportunities to respond to the dozen or so other questions in the Comment.
I was pre-selected in 2020 by Byron Greens on a platform of transparency.
Does this platform include all the various coloured factions within your own fractured Greens as well ?
Duncan can start with transparency by making public the Terms of Reference given to Arcadis for Dual Use Study into the plans for resurrecting the old railway. So far the Greens controlled council has refused to allow the ratepayers of the shire to see the basis of the report they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for.
Many believe Arcadis was told to come up with a justification for running some kind of rail service and they had to make some quite extraordinary assumptions to achieve the required finding.