ALL seven councillors who stood for re-election have been voted back in to represent the community at Kingston Council.
The seven are joined by newcomers Georgina Oxley (South ward) and George Hua (North ward) who were elected to council for the first time and effectively succeed John Ronke and Paul Peulich in the respective wards after Mr Ronke and Mr Peulich decided not to stand for re-election.
The Victorian Electoral Commission declared results on Sunday evening (30 October) that confirmed Crs Tamara Barth, Tamsin Bearsley, Ron Brownlees, David Eden, Geoff Gledhill, Steve Staikos and Rosemary West were re-elected.
Kingston’s nine councillors represent three regional wards and Victorian councillors serve four-year council terms.
Ratepayers voted by post and the VEC allowed a week this time around to allow for votes posted before Friday 21 October to be counted in the final tallies.
Voting in council elections is compulsory and non-voters enrolled on the electoral roll for elections may face a fine.
Ballot papers were marked as priority post but Australia Post made changes to its minimum delivery times in January this year and it can now take up to four business days for priority mail to arrive at its destination.
The VEC’s decision to allow six days after election day to receive all votes cast means councils across the state had no councillors from 6am on election day until new and re-elected councillors are sworn in this week.
Councils were still able to function despite the lack of elected representatives.
Kingston Council confirmed previous councillors did not receive remuneration after 21 October.
The results released by the VEC are provisional and subject to final ratification but there is little chance of change to the outcome in Kingston since no results were marginal enough to trigger recounts.
Preferential voting is used where a ward is electing a single councillor.
In Kingston, all three wards have three councillor spots so proportional voting is used first to determine if councillors win enough first preference votes to achieve a quota and be elected in their own right.
Preferences are distributed to decide which candidates are elected if they do not receive enough votes to achieve a quota.
The News understands there have been complaints lodged with the VEC about some council candidates’ election campaign flyers potentially not complying with Local Government Act election rules.
Central ward councillors are: Rosemary West (1st successful), Geoff Gledhill (2nd successful) and Ron Brownlees (3rd successful).
North ward councillors are: Steve Staikos (1st successful), George Hua (2nd successful) and Tamara Barth (3rd successful).
South ward councillors are: Tamsin Bearsley (1st successful), Georgina Oxley (2nd successful) and David Eden (3rd successful).
See vec.vic.gov.au for full details of all votes tallies.
This article will be published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News dated 2 November 2016.
