MORE TO CITY THAN ROADS, LAKE
Your correspondent Chris Roche ["Surprise at candidates' lack of knowledge of local issues", November 29] raises excellent points regarding council candidates needing to acquire knowledge about the needs and issues that apply within the city.
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Sitting in the gallery or watching online can be informative as can reading the minutes, but above all door-knocking is extremely valuable as a learning exercise.
If nothing else door-knocking lets people know that a candidate is prepared to work and be seen.
COVID-19 is really no excuse for failing to become familiar with the city.
It is nearly too late for candidates to actively campaign but surely a decision to stand is not made only a few weeks before nominating.
Even if it is, surely more is needed than a biography kindly provided by your paper.
Also it needs to be said that as a councillor a person has just one vote and it is foolish to say what you will do, it is far better to say what you support and what you believe in, there is more to life in Wagga than the roads and the lake, and without careful rate increases the city may well stagnate.
Mary Kidson, Wagga
VOTE 'NO' TO MAYORAL ELECTION
At this Saturday election, can I strongly urge Wagga residents to vote NO in the referendum on direct election of mayor.
Terry Ahern in his advertisement in the Weekend Advertiser [November 27] laid out many of the arguments against a directly elected mayor and these should be strongly considered by the voters.
A directly elected mayor will be the person who can spend the most money either backed by a political party or personal wealth.
I might also add that a directly elected mayor will consider themselves to have a mandate for any policy they wish to pursue as they have the 'popular vote', and this will put pressure on the councillors to follow the mayor even if it is against the majority wishes of the population expressed through nine councillors.
Remember if you get a mayor who is not doing the best for the city, we will be stuck with them for four years, not two as happens now. Vote NO.
Daryl Schipp, Alfredtown
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VOTES GOING BELOW THE LINE
Like Keith Wheeler ("Will Wagga have a fresh team after election?", November 29), I will absolutely be voting below the line in the council election, and they'll all be fresh faces.
Voting "above the line" and giving my preference choices to some pony-tailed party apparatchik seems, to me, to be the opposite of sensibility.
If I run out of choices after my first half dozen preferences, my usual practice is to then fill up my remaining minimal number of votes by choosing the last listed names in "political party" lists where there are four or five candidates.
These poor souls aren't even given any chance of getting a gig by their own party - hence their last places on a long list which, by its size is meant to impress, but not much else.
So, I figure that they're choices I can vote for without any chance of my vote ever backfiring on me by electing someone I wouldn't want because they won't ever come within cooee of election.
That's where Keith and I disagree - "no party candidate will ever get" his vote; but I find the those on the tail end of impossibly long lists of party candidates irresistible when I run out of first choices.
Robert T. Walker, Wagga
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