It’ll be a four-horse race for the mayors’s seat when the Charters Towers local government election takes place in March.
The candidates include incumbent mayor Frank Beveridge; principal of Jensen’s Real Estate & Livestock, Andrew Jensen; former LNP state candidate and owner of Schmidt Transport, Liz Schmidt and deputy mayor Wally Brewer, who has served under Cr Beveridge for the entirety of his term.
The ballot draw was held at the Charters Towers RSL recently with the order of the mayoral candidate ballot paper to appear as: 1 – Frank Beveridge; 2 – Andrew Jensen; 3 – Liz Schmidt and 4 – Wally Brewer.
Wally Brewer came to Charters Towers in 1985 as the Sergeant in Charge of the Mid West Prosecution Section. During his police service he spent time as a uniformed officer, OIC of various stations, a detective and a police prosecutor.
Since that time he’s he worked in the city as a self-employed person in the banking, insurance and finance sector, and owned a retail business with his wife until he returned to the police force in 2004 at age 50, before he took age retirement in 2014.
In the 2012 local elections Mr Brewer was elected as a councillor after which he was promoted to deputy Mayor by council.
“I presently commit most of my time to council, though I also volunteer with the Justice of the Peace program, the local Crime Watch group; serve on the board of the Civic Club; I’m the chair of the RADF committee and I’m a board member for the North Queensland Sports Foundation.”
Mr Brewer said if he’s elected as mayor it’s his intention to remodel the way the office of the Mayor relates to the elected councillors.
“These people need to be heavily involved in council affairs and to do this it requires the Mayor to change the management style adopted by the present Mayor.
“I will adopt the collective management style I have been trained in all my working life. I will ask councillors to take on a greater work load and trust them to carry out their duties to the best of their ability.
“I will seek to open up council meetings to a greater extent then now and would seek to abolish or restructure the directors meetings.”
Liz Schmidt has 37 years’ experience in the business sector building a successful transport business with her husband Owen from one truck to eight triple road trains.
“I know how to run a business, balance the books and to survive through bad times. We survived through the live cattle shut down and have grown our business through good management and restructuring,” she said.
Mrs Schmidt said because she spends significant time away with the business she considers a herself a ” new local” since buying a residence in Charters Towers in 2014.
“However, my business has used Charters Towers as the hub of our operation for more than 30 years, we purchase all of our tyres and the majority of our fuel in the town, and we’ve employed four Charters Towers drivers.”
Liz said her priorities for the Charters Towers include attracting new industry and small business opportunities to the city while supporting what is already in place; balancing the budget by cutting costs rather than raising rates and charges; raising funds through grants rather than through unsustainable borrowing and running the council as a business with profits to benefit the rate payers and residents.
“I’ll also be lobbying for an all-weather inland north-south highway as part of the North Australia Initiative to make the city the transport “hub” it should be.”
Andrew Jensen has lived in Charters Towers for 35 years and has owned his real estate agency for 28 years.
Mr Jensen said he’s always had the best interests of the local community at heart and lists one of his proudest moments as being part of a group that helped keep All Souls St Gabriels School open when it was facing closure in 2000, he has been on the All Souls’ board since that time. He is also the current president of the Charters Towers RSL.
He said one of his primary objectives is to ensure jobs for local community members are maintained.
“I’m on the government Rural Debt and Drought Taskforce, and I’ve repeatedly pointed out that when our local graziers are suffering like they are currently, small business suffers as well.
“We have the biggest river (Burdekin) in Queensland near our door and while their has been talk about developing the weir and increasing water capacity it’s time action is taken on the idea.
He said he’d also push hard for the proposed meatworks and fertiliser plant projects to become for the city.
“If a proposal will create more local employment opportunities in the Towers, I’m all for it.
Moving the flying fox colony from Lissner Park in the city’s heart is another priority for Mr Jensen.
“They need to be moved to a less intrusive area, so many of my clients are losing a lot of money because of the damage the bat’s are doing to land value around the park.”
Current Charters Towers mayor Frank Beveridge has been a councillor in the city for 15 years including one term as deputy mayor before he took on his current role in 2012.
He said over the past 20 years he’s been involved in a large number of committees in various roles and has been involved in the community in one way or another.
“I have been in small business for 25 years and understand the difficult times that people are currently going through, with the drought and mining downturn,” Mr Beveridge said.
“It’s also difficult times in local government. We are experiencing the lowest funding to local government in 20 years which means we are squeezed between reduced government funding and trying to keep the rates as low as possible.”
He said one of his main aims if re-elected is to create jobs.
“We have been progressing our meat processing facility for the past three years and we have an international fertilizer company moving forward with a plant on our industrial estate. Both of these developments will create good long term employment in the city.”
He said progress will also continue on the Upper Burdekin river catchment plan which will enable farmers and graziers to trade water licenses and allocations, so that they can expand their farms and employ more people.
A field of 30 candidates nominated for the councillor positions who will appear in the following ballot order: Ian Stockwell, Cheryl Dempster, Katie Dunlop, Roma Bailey, Brian Beveridge, Barb Sowman, Graham Lohmann, Graham Moody, Peter Burke, Barbara Robinson, Tom Hogg, Michael Bell, Ian Urquhart, Sonia Bennetto, Bob Murray, Tess Pemble, Mike Power, Jim Wright, Dominique Everard, Wendy Emerson, Brett Maff, Tracey Murphy, Bernie Robertson, Tony McDonald, David Nutley, Christopher Bawden, Keith Matthews, Brian Reiffel, Durant Livy and Alan Barr.