HORSHAM Rural City councillor John Robinson has resumed his council duties after signalling his intent to "step aside" earlier this month.
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Cr Robinson announced his decision on July 1 after voicing his discontent with the council's draft City to River master plan and the handling of a recision motion he planned to raise regarding the plan.
He attended the council's July meeting on Monday night.
Speaking to the Mail-Times, Cr Robinson said he decided to attend the meeting following the "overwhelming support" from residents he had received.
"A lot of groups and people contacted me in the period between making the announcement and Monday's meeting, and asked for me to continue," he said.
"It was up to the community to decide. If the way I was doing business was not what the community wanted, then I was happy to step aside and let someone else take the reins. That was clearly not the message that the community has given me.
"I asked for my council allowances to be stopped and I have now asked for them to be resumed."
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Horsham Mayor Mark Radford called a special council meeting on July 3 to discuss the Cr Robinson's recision motion, however he was unable to attend due to a prior specialist appointment.
Cr Grimble moved the motion in his absence and it was defeated, four votes to two.
"The motion I lodged was about creating enough time to talk to the community about the implications of the plan. There was no need to cause the level of alarm and it's resulted in a loss of confidence in council," he said.
"For early three years now, we've been at a historically low confidence level, and I'm not walking away from my responsibilities in that either."
Cr Robinson said he was not satisfied with the process in which the meeting was called. He called two point of orders at Monday night's meeting and questioned the legality of the meeting.
Council's chief executive Sunil Bhalla told Cr Robinson that he had obtained legal advice on the matter and that the meeting was legally called.
Cr Radford said he apologised for not changing the meeting to a date when Cr Robinson was available.
"Once I knew you weren't able to attend the meeting, I should have given you the opportunity to shift it to another night. In reflection that was a dumb thing not to do," Cr Radford said.
"The second thing I regret is the fact that this all started with over-the-top criticising of the staff in open council and that was the environment in which these decisions were made. I regret not intervening during the meeting when you and others were criticising the staff."
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