In his welcome of the newest councillor Glen Andreazza to his first general council meeting, Cr Dal Broi congratulated him on a positive campaign and said the win represented the community having their say on the contentious issue.

"I personally must admit that I took it also, not you [Cr Andreazza] so much but a candidate did lobby hard on councillor numbers. It didn’t resonate," Cr Dal Broi said.

"So that can be taken as a survey that the community are still happy with 12 councillors."

That candidate referred to was Bill Lancaster, who during the campaign said council missed a "golden opportunity" to hold the referendum during the byelection, and would actively peruse a reduction in numbers.

He laughed upon hearing the mayor's comments.

"It just shows he is frightened of asking the people what they think," Mr Lancaster said.

"The mayor wasn't at the polling booth. I had an overwhelming number of people come up to me saying they support a reduction in councillor numbers."

However the mayor stood by his comments, saying Mr Lancaster was "entitled to his opinion" but the numbers spoke for themselves.

"What I said was if the community was interested, if they were concerned, it didn’t reflect in their first preferences," Cr Dal Broi said.

"Obviously the community was interested in more positive campaigns like those of Glen and Damien [Marcus] who want to grow Griffith and the community."

Mr Lancaster said there could be many reasons why someone voted for another, however taking the mayor's logic says with over 2000 first preference votes, there is a "strong belief" within the community a reduction is called for.

RELATED

Cr Dal Broi didn't rule out another referendum in the upcoming general council elections in 2020, however he said it was for the councillors themselves to decide to pass a motion for the referendum. 

Mr Lancaster said he still plans to remain incredibly vocal in advocating for a referendum to let the people have their voices heard.

***

While you're with us, did you know that you can now receive updates straight to your inbox every Monday at 6am from The Area News? To make sure you're up to date with all the Griffith and MIA news you can sign up here.