Committee for Geelong has issued a 10-point check-list for the city’s next mayor.
Committee boss Rebecca Casson said the mayor must possess “most, if not all” the lobby group’s favoured personal attributes.
The list included a “record of high achievement” along with the ability to handle the media and act as a spokesperson “at home and abroad”. The new mayor should also be “socially at ease” and understand the aspirations of “various sections” of the community.
Ms Casson said the committee would not endorse a candidate, despite former chairman Frank Costa telling the Independent he supported Ken Jarvis’s bid “100 per cent”.
The committee issued its mayoral checklist a week after acting mayor Bruce Harwood said council would review its $20,000-a-year membership of the private group.
The membership issue emerged after the committee criticised council’s Community Priority Projects system for equalising ward funding.
Cr Harwood slammed the committee, accusing it of an “unwillingness to communicate with us”.
Councillors have indicated to the Independent a broad concern about local business interests waging a campaign to deny wards funding in favour of a city-centric, mayor-led agenda.
Former mayor Keith Fagg quit after failing to convince the12 ward councillors to hand over the funding to remove parking meters in the central city area and initiate a hard-rubbish collection.
Ms Casson said the committee believed Geelong needed an “inspirational mayor” who was “decisive in action”.
“It needs a mayor who can develop and articulate a shared vision for the future and lead the council and the community towards the positive delivery of that vision.”
“We look forward to welcoming another new mayor so that Geelong can further develop a broad whole-of-municipality approach to the identification of issues, the development of regional projects and broad-based decision making.”
