Towers new mayor reveals future plans and council shake-up

Ms Schmidt plans to tackle her role from the inside out, first addressing her council team before turning her sights on projects and issues across her electorate.

Communication is one of her biggest priorities - not only welcoming back reference groups with collectives such as the weir reference group and Indigenous representatives, but also inviting residents to contact her personally.

"I enjoy the job, we did a lot of good things last time...it's time to continue to do what we started," she said.

"First cab off the rank for me will be to sit councillors down...and ask them their expectations of me and then explain to them, as their leader, my expectations of them," she said.

"I'll go with them to their community every three months or every half a year, whatever the community wants...so the community knows they're heard by their councillor and councillors are taking issues back to council."

Ms Schmidt said councillors must attend a monthly meeting and a yearly budget meeting to receive their salary, but in keeping with her attempt to dock the pays of underachieving councillors during her last term, she said she will push for compensation for council members who step up to fulfil their colleague's portfolios.

"We talk about development, bringing people, jobs, but there's no point having any of that if you don't have anywhere to accommodate them," Ms Schmidt said.

Ms Schmidt said a two bedroom unit accommodation has been implemented at the site of the old bowls club and another off Price Street - providing low cost housing for residents and the influx of professionals including school teachers and doctors.

"Heritage listing is a constant problem. It's important but it's...balancing the heritage of the town with the development. If you impose the most rigorous heritage laws on a house, it means it's very expensive to do it up," she said.

"We try and get the town planner to work as closely as possible with people."

While not much can be done to alleviate high rates, Ms Schmidt said her team will assess and determine what can be done to "keep them as low as possible".

"All council can really do is to reduce or stabilise rates to 32 within the CPI. All we can do is manage the service and rates of our community and get as much grant money as we possibly can to do the things that need to be done out of that - rubbish, roads and sewerage," Ms Schmidt said.

"We'll potentially be looking at water allocation. My council reduced (it). We were struggling to keep up and still are. Our water infrastructure is very old so we're working around getting grants."

While Charters Towers has had a "significant ice issue" for some time, there are services on offer to tackle the issue.

"I'm aware of the issue. It's very close to my own family. My daughter has just recently become clean from ice....and my grandson also had a significant ice issue. This drug is insidious," Ms Schmidt said.

"They're both clean now, thank goodness. (I will do) anything I can...to assist the police and anybody else to help, because I know what it's like to be a family member of someone who is ice addicted and how desperate you become."

Ms Schmidt said while there were local services, Charters Towers was in need of a Narcotics Anonymous.

"I offered the church (I own)...whether someone wants to use it as a meeting place."

The city will benefit from future projects, as well as the growth of current projects and investments - including the Big Rocks Weir, the Copperstring Project, cleaning up the CBD, growing the saleyards and weighing up the benefits of tourism cash flow from events such as concerts.

"It's about engaging the community and finding out what they want and what they're willing to pay for...keeping services exactly what they are without reducing any services at all but reducing things we can without having an impact on the community," Ms Schmidt said.

"We've got 777ha that my council bought with potential for industrial development.

"I know what needs to happen at the saleyards and what doesn't. It's finding out what the situation is with all of them and increasing our capacity at the saleyards.

"It's huge. It's the only thing we've got that makes money for us."

While Mr Beveridge's term has come to an end, he leaves behind a legacy of his own.

"It's been a very strange election. We've had some high profile mayors (voted out) that no-one saw coming," he said.

"There's been a lot of state issues here and this is the first election since we've had the last two years of CPI rises where people are struggling and I think they've had a baseball bat out for mayors.

"People really are struggling out there and it's making it hard to make ends meet so they're wanting to send a message, I guess."

Mr Beveridge said there is plenty of promise for the city, including a 200 man camp for the Copperstring project, more business vacancies in the Goldtower Precinct and a town pool upgrade.

"We will be growing into the future...there's a 12-unit development happening right now in Richmond Hill...for government workers," he said.

"We're going through a development boom in North Queensland that we won't see for another 20 years. Over the next 12 years we will see over $6bn in projects with the Singapore Military project, Copperstring and the raising of the Burdekin Wall, and we're right in the middle of all of it."