WHILE speculation becomes rife every September before councils choose their leaders for the year, Orange residents are only two years away from taking the reins.
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From 2016, residents will choose their mayor for the entire four-year term.
The deputy mayor will still be decided annually, but the meeting will lack the fanfare it currently has when both top positions are up for grabs.
This will undoubtedly change the dynamics on the council - as we saw from our online poll on Monday, the candidates the public felt were the best fit were not elected by their peers.
It begs the question as to whether the public or the council are better judges of leadership, but it can also make for an unruly, dysfunctional mix.
Part of Wollongong City Council’s downfall in 2008 was due to the popularly-elected mayor being politically at odds with his councillors.
A common argument among councils who do elect their leaders every year is mayors elected from within the ranks are more representative of the council as a whole.
An annual election is also a report card on a leader’s performance - do well and subsequent terms might be on the cards, fail to measure up and a single term becomes much more likely.
On the other hand, many councils tend to keep successful mayors for long periods anyway and Orange is an example - providing the public chooses well, council operations might not change much at all.
What remains to be seen is the level of interest in the popularly-elected mayor’s position in 2016.
Four years is a considerable period of time to devote to public office and with the functions and meetings requiring a mayor’s attendance, it is a full-time job.
Until then, we wish councillors John Davis and Chris Gryllis a successful year and look forward to one final year of mayoral speculation in 2015.