The retired project designer and environmental advocate is taking part in this year's upcoming council election as the third name on the Greens ticket, which is being led by his wife Jenny McKinnon.

Born and bred in Wagga, the 67-year-old has decades of experience in project planning and engineering, which he hopes to use to help make the city more environmentally friendly.

"I have spent such a long time in design and project design so I think I've got an eye for what good development is and what is required in a development," Mr Benedyka said.

"Wagga is growing a lot and it is projected the population will get to 100,000 and as we create new suburbs it really shouldn't just be 'hand it over to the developers'."

Along with the other candidates on the Greens ticket, Mr Benedyka is pushing for Wagga to focus its development on becoming a '15-minute city', where residents will be able to reach everything they need in just 15 minutes of walking or cycling.

He said to do this, the city needs to focus on developing good footpaths and cycleways, as well as help people off their car dependency, which he said causes "pollution and a whole range of other issues".

"If you look at people in Wagga travelling in their cars, it's generally a big sheet of metal, with four big wheels and just one person," Mr Benedyka said.

"If Wagga is going to get to 100,000 people the way it is currently growing, the city will have to be absolutely filled with carpark after carpark and we don't want to see that.

"But if we think a little bit differently, we can help get more public transport but also build more pathways which people can use to get healthy and fit as they cycle and walk within reasonable distances of their residences."

The father-of-six also hopes to push for more trees to be planted across the city, particularly along quiet roads.

"We really want to do extensive tree planting in urban areas, including along wide streets that need shading," he said.

"We've got so many wide streets with hardly any traffic and we'd like to see them improved with a bit of an oasis with shade trees down the middle of them, which would help make the city more liveable and not just thousands of rooftops."

Mr Benedyka said he would like to bring respect and co-operation into the council chamber to help create a team of councillors that can work well both together and with council staff.

"Having meetings that just go on and on is not my cup of tea and I'd like to see them crisp, sharp and to the point," he said.

In the lead up to this year's election, The Daily Advertiser has profiled the candidates looking to secure a spot on Wagga City Council.

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