Perth Voice Interactive

PERTH has a new councillor, with Steve Wellard winning the October 18 extraordinary election.

A vacancy was left by former councillor Brent Fleeton who retired one year early to pursue a government advisory job in Dubai.

It’s the second time Mr Fleeton has cut short a council appointment, having previously left his role as a Bayswater councillor partway through his appointment.

Cr Wellard was ahead at the start of the five way race with 23.56 per cent of first preference votes. After preferences were distributed he ended up with 1644 votes, winning out over nearest contender Shirley Vine’s 1276.

Perth council also has a new deputy lord mayor, with Cr Bruce Reynolds winning the votes of his colleagues this week.

Shortly after the era of lord mayor Basil Zempilas started in 2020, councillors agreed among themselves to take one-year turns as deputy. 

Accordingly Cr Clyde Bevan gave up his deputy role this month after a year as 2IC, and Cr Reynolds and Catherine Lezer nominated themselves. 

With nine councillors voting in a secret ballot there should’ve been a clean majority, but someone lodged an informal vote, so they were evenly split 4/4.

With one person out of nine managing to make an informal vote, that makes for a far higher proportion of screwy ballots than the general public who voted in the election, where only 34 informal votes were cast out of 3765 total. 

After an adjournment and a private meeting between councillors behind closed doors, a second meeting was called and there was now a third candidate on the ballot, with Cr Reynolds nominating Liam Gobbert.

This time Cr Reynolds held a majority of votes and won the role (which comes with a deputy lord mayoral allowance of $34,317 per annum).

by DAVID BELL