Michael Regan’s Your Northern Beaches and Libs sweep to victory in Northern Beaches Election
FORMER Warringah Mayor Michael Regan and the Liberal Party look likely to control two-thirds of the new Northern Beaches Council, as the election results come in.
Manly
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FORMER Warringah Mayor Michael Regan and the Liberal Party look likely to control two-thirds of the new Northern Beaches Council.
As of Saturday night, the count for the first Northern Beaches Council election saw Mr Regan’s team of independents, Your Northern Beaches Independents, on track to take four of the 15 council seats.
The Liberals are also set to take control of five of the seats.
Good for Manly candidate Candy Bingham is also expected to take one of the seats in Manly.
The remaining five positions will be determined after preferences are counted early next week.
There are three councillors for each of the five wards covering the northern beaches: Manly, Pittwater, Curl Curl, Frenchs Forest and Narrabeen.
Your Northern Beaches is likely to get one seat in both Curl Curl and Narrabeen, and two in French’s Forest.
That would see three former Warringah Councillors take seats with Mr Regan, Sue Heins and Roslyn Harrison likely to be joined by art identity, Penny Philpott on the new council.
Mr Regan, the Your Northern Beaches independent Team leader, and mayoral hopeful told the Manly Daily he was “very humbled by the result”.
“We ran a very positive campaign with a positive vision for our future.
“We look forward to getting on with that vision and I am really pleased the community responded as positively as they did.”
The Your Northern Beaches independent Team plans to immediately undertake a review into offleash dog areas on the peninsula.
Push for a 10-year lease for all 18-holes of Warringah golf course, and start community consultation with ratepayers about an upgrade to Lottoland, Mr Regan said.
The golf course was given a five year lease with three five-year extensions by council administrator Dick Persson in May.
He opted to extend the lease for five years for the north side of the course and 20 years for the south to allow elected officials an opportunity to create more sport fields.
A tender process is currently under way to build a new clubhouse to home lawn bowls, golf and tennis, but it will be decided by the new council.
“At the polling booths throughout the week, the biggest issue was Warringah golf course,” Mr Regan said. “It was the most asked about issue by far.”
Mr Regan had received the largest number of votes before prepoll was counted for Curl Curl ward.
Liberal candidate and former police officer Dave Walton was also likely to claim one of the three positions in Curl Curl.
Mr Regan had promised to seek expressions of interest for developers to build up to seven-storeys to the south of Lottoland in exchange for an upgraded stadium.
On Monday he stood by that commitment.
“It is overdue, that is potentially an immediate cost savings to council if we do it right,” he said.
The cost to ratepayers to maintain Lottoland is about $1 million per year. Mr Regan said if the council could upgrade the stadium with a public-private partnership and have a developer agree to an ongoing maintenance it would be an ongoing saving of $1 million.
“That can go back into grassroots sport, you can maintain the oval maintain the asset and we have an instant saving we can plough back into our sportsground strategy,” he said.
A larger prepoll turnout than usual has left a number of seats up in the air.
It is expected that counting of prepoll and redistribution of preference votes should commence
Monday — a firmer idea of the final seats should be known by midweek.
The counting was still tight in Pittwater — where there were 2200 prepoll votes cast on Friday alone — with the decision of the two remaining seats likely to come down to preferences.
These spots are likely to fall to either independent Alex McTaggart, Your Northern Beaches candidate Ian White, independent Selena Griffith, or The Greens candidate Miranda Korzy.
Liberal candidate Kylie Ferguson would appear to have locked in a seat in Pittwater, was not willing to claim victory yet, due to the huge amount of prepoll votes yet to be counted.
“I am humbled,” the former Pittwater deputy mayor said.
“I had so much community support, I have never felt so warm.”
She said she expected more than 8000 prepoll votes to be counted in Pittwater.
In Manly, two of the spots are expected to go to Good for Manly candidate — and former Manly councillor — Candy Bingham and former Liberal Manly and Warringah Councillor Pat Daley.
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The third Manly councillor is expected to go to either Your Northern Beaches or The Greens.
In Narrabeen, the third seat could go to former Warringah councillor, Vincent De Luca
If Your Northern Beaches takes six seats after preferences, they would have a 40 per cent control over the new council.
Rory Amon from the Liberals said they were happy to land a candidate in every ward.
“This is our first time out doing this and it’s a really strong result. This is just the beginning. I think it’s pretty rare, especially we only had candidates put in the field at the beginning of August.”
Candy Bingham from Good for Manly said she was excited at the results, which she said had swung away from Liberals.
“Previously the Libs had 50 per cent of the vote whereas now the two independent teams have knocked them off quite dramatically.
“I’m in, but we won’t know until the middle of the week for the third spot.
“The preferences are going to be quite important.”
As of Monday, Liberal candidate for Manly, Pat Daley appeared to have the most support in Manly.
He told the Manly Daily he would push to keep Warringah golf course as 18 holes as one of his first actions on the new council.
“I am absolutely delighted with my result,” he said.
“It has been a strong showing form the Liberals to get one candidate up in each ward, particularly given we only had a couple of weeks to campaign.”
Peninsula residents were met with an overwhelming 81 candidates on their ballot papers on polling day, separated into 12 groups.
The first election of the new northern beaches council was created by the merger of Manly, Warringah and Pittwater councils last year.
RESULTS AS OF SATURDAY NIGHT
CURL CURL
1. Michael Regan — Your Northern Beaches Independents
2. David Walton- Liberal
3. Undecided
MANLY
1. Candy Bingham — Good for Manly
2. Pat Daley- Liberal
3. Undecided
NARRABEEN
1. Sue Heins — Your Northern Beaches Independents
2. Rory Amon- Liberal
3. Undecided
PITTWATER
1. Kylie Ferguson- Liberal
2. Undecided
3. Undecided
FRENCHS FOREST
1. Roslyn Harrison — Your Northern Beaches Independents
2. Penny Philpott Your Northern Beaches Independents
3. Stuart Sprott- Liberal
DETAILS: Follow the live results here
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