Weddin Shire Council Mayor Craig Bembrick announced earlier this month he will be not re-contesting the upcoming local government elections and will be stepping down as a councillor and mayor of Weddin Shire.
After serving the community of Weddin Shire for the past eight years, the past three years as Mayor, Cr Bembrick said he plans to spend more time with his family,
When he was first elected to Weddin Council in 2016, Cr Bembrick said he had taken on three jobs, including at Weddin Council, running the gym and working at Lachlan Fertilisers, before stepping back to work at Lachlan Fertilisers and as a councillor four years ago.
Cr Bembrick said he first put up his hand to run as a councillor in 2016 as he is fairly community minded and he was asked to nominate.
Following his re-election in 2021, Cr Bembrick said it was a bit of a turbulent time with difficulties arising due to the Main Street reconstruction, and it was then he was encouraged by other Weddin Shire councillors to run as mayor.
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Cr Bembrick said as a councillor he has been involved in plenty of jobs and events that were supported and completed under council that he was proud of including the completion of Grenfell's Main Street, the completion of the new pool and opening of the Medical Centre, as well as the Light Up The Night event - the largest drone show in Australia at the time.
Cr Bembrick said he was also very proud of the new signage welcoming people into the villages within Weddin Shire.
While he is proud of these successes, Cr Bembrick stresses it was a team effort with his fellow councillors and council staff.
Cr Bembrick said he was also very proud to preside over five citizenship ceremonies during the last three years.
There were some challenges too, Cr Bembrick said, with a big challenge recently being the flooding and road damage across the shire.
"That's going to be ongoing for a number of years now. It's a big thing," Cr Bembrick said.
He said trying to fix the roads fixed without any money as a small council was very difficult.
"One of the negative things is the way that the state and federal governments approach the funding for the roads and use the council's as a bank," Cr Bembrick said.
"They expect you to do millions and millions of dollars worth of work on the roads without actually giving you any money."
Cr Bembrick said Weddin Council was one of the main instigators in getting a twenty percent upfront payment from the NSW government with emergency funding for fixing roads.
With this successful push for the upfront payment, Cr Bembrick gives a lot of the credit to Weddin Shire Council's General Manager, Noreen Vu.
While he enjoyed being a councillor, Cr Bembrick said a challenge does come from social media sites where there can be so much rubbish directed at councillors and their decisions.
Cr Bembrick said he believes the rubbish and comments directed at councillors on sites such as Facebook is ruining local government and discourages people from running for council.
"It's an issue. It's a really, really big issue and if people don't start understanding they're not going to have councillors run, I don't know what happens then," he said.
Cr Bembrick said eventually constituents won't be able to have a good choice of candidates about who they want leading their community, and eventually people will just have whoever puts their name down.
While he does encourage people to put their hands up to become councillors, especially if they are community minded, Cr Bembrick said having a thick skin or staying away from Facebook is helpful.
Looking to the future, Cr Bembrick said he is not ruling out returning to local government after a break.
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