Meet Your New Councillor
The Glenferrie Times has arranged a meet-and-greet with the newly elected councillor for Glenferrie Ward, Cr Wes Gault. All local residents and businesses are welcome to attend, have a chat, and share their ideas and thoughts for the Glenferrie Ward. It will be held at Osteria 20, 818 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn on Thursday 10 December 4:00pm - 5:00pm. No RSVP necessary, simply drop in.
Congratulations to Cr Wes Gault for being elected the councillor for Glenferrie Ward for the next four years. Thank you to outgoing Cr Steve Hurd for his service and representation of Glenferrie Ward for the last eight years.
The 2020 local council election results were finalised on 9 November. On 16 November, the 11 Boroondara councillors elected from single member wards were sworn in at a Special Meeting of Council.
Newly elected Cr Gault is looking forward to serving the Glenferrie community in a number of different ways, including environmental sustainability, planning and design, budget priorities and some of the "most pressing issues such as providing more support for those amongst us detrimentally affected by COVID-19, and meaningful upgrades of our strip shopping and business areas."
Of the 11 City of Boroondara councillors, we now have five new councillors: three replacing retired Cr Coral Ross (Gardiner Ward), Cr Jack Wegman (Junction Ward) and Cr Phillip Healey (Studley Ward) who each did not run for re-election, one councillor for the newly introduced Riversdale Ward, and Glenferrie's newly elected Cr Gault.
First preference votes in the Glenferrie Ward saw Cr Gault with 31.14% (2608), Steve Hurd 23.03% (1929), Henry Kerr 21.84% (1829), Florence Edwards 15.2% (1273), Luke Balasingam 7.21% (604) and Lindon Parbery 1.58% (132). Without an absolute majority, the result was then determined by the distribution of preferences.
Like the state Legislative Assembly and federal House of Representatives, the process of preferential voting involves eliminating the candidate with the fewest votes and re-allocating their second preference votes. This process is repeated until one candidate has the absolute majority. In the Glenferrie Ward, after distribution of preferences the result was Cr Wes Gault 55.57% (4654) and Henry Kerr 44.43% (3721). Glenferrie Ward had the lowest voter turnout of City of Boroondara at 77.07% (8587) of the total enrolment, nearly 10% lower than most other wards.
With this year’s election seeing the retirement of three councillors with over 15 years of service each, and the election of five new councillors, the community might see some new and different perspectives brought to council over the next four years.
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