Albany Mayor proud of teamwork shown to reach amicable result on councillor’s mining motion

Mayor Dennis Wellington has said he would be “surprised” if other local government councils could have worked together to reach such an amicable result as Albany’s did last week. The council spent over an hour of a four-hour ordinary meeting determining its position on two motions tabled by Cr Stephen Grimmer designed to show support for community members opposing mining to the west of Albany. The motions successfully attained the council’s support to send a letter to the Mining Minister and start the process of developing a new policy. Councillors spent about 45 minutes discussing the finer points of the latter, including refining its focus to applications concerning land controlled by the City of Albany rather than the whole municipality. Mr Wellington said a presentation from the mines department the week before had helped councillors understand how they could best support the community. “They said ‘it’s got nothing to do with you, it’s all about the people’,” he said. “But basically there are bits of City land in between and around that council needs to be on the same page about as other people in the community. “So we worked through that and it went through pretty well.” Because councillor motions — unlike most of the motions before the council — are presented for the first time at ordinary meetings rather than going through the committee process, opportunities to refine them before councillors vote are limited. He said he would have liked more of the meeting’s packed gallery — many of whom suggested the council was not listening — to have stayed for the discussion, which he said was typical of how differences of opinion were resolved at committee meetings and workshops. Several councillors said they were pleased to have reached a solution given their initial concerns. Mr Wellington said he hoped the display of “imperative” collaboration would appeal to potential candidates ahead of the forthcoming election. “We had the first prospective councillor session on Monday night and there were only five people there,” he said. “There is another one tomorrow night so we’ll have to see how many people turn up to that one.” The City of Albany will hold its second candidate information session from 5.30pm on September 6 at its North Road administration building.