Armadale mayor Henry Zelones was returned as mayor while two new councillors were welcomed to the council on Monday night following the shock defeats of council stalwarts Jeff Munn and Melissa Northcott at Saturday’s election.
Voter turnout was almost five per cent lower than in 2013 with only 23.7 per cent of electors choosing to vote.
Ward participation rates ranged from 27.2 in the Jarrah ward to 20.7 per cent in the Palomino ward, which former Palomino ward councillor Laurence Sargeson won by 24 votes over Ms Northcott.
Newcomer Michelle Silver beat Mr Munn by 70 votes in the Lake ward while all other previous councillors were returned.
Mr Zelones and deputy mayor Ruth Butterfield were returned to their positions at the council swearing-in ceremony on Monday.
Mr Zelones thanked his River ward voters for returning him to council and said he was looking forward to being mayor again.
“Being re-elected as mayor is an honour,” he said.
“It’s an honour to lead any community but Armadale’s a tough place, there’s a lot of issues and growing pains and I have to do my best to make sure the whole community gets a fair go.”
Mr Zelones said he and the council had a number of issues they wanted to address including rates and strategic planning.
“Regarding the rates we want to look at that, we have a new strategic community plan we have to put in place,” he said.
“Now that reform is out of the way, because we were geared for a new structure to take over, we didn’t do a whole lot of work so there’s going to be an internal review to make sure everything is running as efficiently as possible.”
Mr Munn had been a councillor on and off for the past 34 years and was instrumental in getting recreational facilities like the Armadale swimming pool built.
He said when he started it was hard to change the mindset of the council to build recreational facilities.
“(The pool) was significant because I fought for that tooth and nail and passed about 12 motions on council which I didn’t even get seconders for,” he said.
“I wore down the old council which were mostly farmers at the time.
“They didn’t want to do anything and at the time we had a growth rate of six per cent but they didn’t want to build any recreation facilities.”
He believed the controversy surrounding high rates in the Lake ward played a part in his downfall.
He said rates were likely to continue to rise over the next couple of years but the council could do some work on reducing the special area rating charge in Harrisdale and Piara Waters to make it fairer for those residents.
The state-wide participation rate for postal elections this year was 27.5 per cent which was marginally lower than the 27.8 per cent recorded at the 2013 ordinary elections.
