A STEEP learning curve awaits the incoming Orange City Council, with at least seven new faces to be elected.
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Only four members of the outgoing council, Kevin Duffy, Tony Mileto, Jason Hamling and Jeff Whitton are restanding, and also standing for mayor.
Fellow mayoral candidate, former Orange councillor Neil Jones, joins the above four as the only candidates with previous experience on Orange's local government.
Orange City Council's CEO David Waddell said his staff was looking forward to working with a new panel.
"We'll miss the wisdom of some of the older councillors but we like it, we like that induction period, telling new councillors how the city works, having dialogue about what their dreams are ...
"Staff look forward to a new council, new ideas, new demands of us."
Local elections are being held on December 4 with candidates expected to be confirmed later in December.
"At that point we'll congratulate them, shake hands and wish them merry Christmas," Mr Waddell said, explaining the timeline heading into the new term.
A two-day induction course on January 28 and 29 will begin the councillors' tuition with council's directors and Mr Waddell providing guidance.
"We will run them through things like how the code of meeting practice works, how to run a meeting, rules and regulations, the local government act," he said
"We will start the process of educating them on things like how water [services] work, we start that process."
The new council will have its first meeting on February 1, 2022, when it will be sworn in.
"They also start to select the chairs of the committees and the deputy mayor of course, because it's only the mayor that is popularly elected," Mr Waddell said.
After that, it's business as usual.
"We'll be putting things in front of them where we need real decisions that we can't make as staff," he said.
"Things like big DAs, controversial DAs maybe very large tenders that we're waiting for them to approve over the $350,000 mark and so it begins ..."
"Over that first quarters we'll be giving them weekly briefings on topics, trying to get them up to speed on things like housing strategy, how water works, the engineers will give them technical sessions.
"We just really try to educate them quickly so they get to a standard where they can understand."
Mr Waddell said the council staff would soon call for input into its community strategic plan which would be synthesised into a formal document for release around June.
"That document becomes the roadmap for the term."
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