Candidates eyeing off a seat at the council table have voiced mixed opinions on postponing the election by a year, questioning if it was still necessary.
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It was decided weeks ago by the state government to push back a trip to the ballot box for local councils across NSW by 12 months in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The decision was initially considered reasonable by those candidates who already entered the election race.
However, as restrictions start to slowly ease, Greens lead candidate Jenny McKinnon said she has started to think that postponing the September elections by a year "might be too long" and a decision that could be reviewed by the state government.
"It seemed reasonable back when everything looked so dire, but we have actually managed this reasonably well. I wonder if we could go ahead with a modified local government election, which would probably involve postal votes?" she said.
"I would like to see a revisit by the state government about that decision and whether we could reasonably do a postal voting situation with a six-month postponement rather than 12 months."
In other news:
Wagga mayor Greg Conkey said he admits the decision to delay elections by 12 months was initially surprising to him.
However, he said there are some tough decisions to be made in the coming 18 months and questioned the fairness of expecting new councillors to be across all the issues.
"It is going to take a long, long time for us to recover from this and there are a lot of decisions and discussions that are going to have to take place," he said.
"Is it fair to ask a new council to be making those decisions without knowing the full background, they would have to come up to speed very quickly.
"So I think at the end of the day, 12 months gives that flexibility to be making these decisions."
Candidate Jacob O'Hare said in a perfect world he would have loved for the council elections to happen by the end of this year, but that would not be in the best interests of the community's health.
Although restrictions are easing, Mr O'Hare said it was not responsible to jeopardise the efforts that have been made to keep COVID-19 cases as low as possible.
"Giving the councillors another 12 months to run riot, if you will, is a bit disappointing, but so long as the community is safe that is all that matters," he said.
Mr O'Hare said that an additional 12 months was "so advantageous" for new candidates such as himself to get their name out in the community.
"As terrible as that might sound ... we have to take advantage of that extra time we have been given," he said.