A born and bred Queanbeyanite, Kenrick Winchester was honoured when he was named the new Queanbeyan Palerang Regional Council (QPRC) Mayor earlier this month, on Wednesday 12 January.
Having received calls from several of the new councillors ahead of the extraordinary meeting to let him know he had their vote, he told Canberra Daily he had “an inkling it was going to happen”.
“It still was a strange feeling sitting up in the big chair for the first time,” he smiled.
Mr Winchester was first elected to the Queanbeyan City Council in 2012, and then the QPRC when it was established in 2017.
The new mayor said he hadn’t considered the mayoral position until around a year ago when outgoing mayor Tim Overall made it clear he would stand down at the 2021 election.
His first order of business in the role will be organising a forensic independent audit of council services.
With nine of the 11 councillors newly elected to the QPRC, Mr Winchester said now is the ideal time to refresh and assess.
“It’s just having a real thorough review of everything we do to make sure we’re not wasting time, money, effort on things that aren’t achieving what we set out to do,” he said.
He also put to bed any chance of a special rate variation of 28 per cent over three years floated by Council last year.
“That’s just not something we can consider,” Mr Winchester said. “We need to get our heads around why our finances are in that position.
“I’d much prefer to have a forensic audit of council operations to see if we can identify savings and live within our means.
“It seems to be the easy option to go to rate payers and ask for rate rises.”
READ MORE: Kenrick Winchester elected Mayor of Queanbeyan Palerang Regional Council
2017 council merger ‘a real eye opener’
A local councillor of nine years, Mr Winchester said the Queanbeyan City Council was a good introduction to the role, familiarising him with the many issues that are commonplace in an urban council.
When Palerang, a rural shire without a major urban centre, merged in 2017, he was forced to start considering issues he hadn’t previously dealt with in Queanbeyan, like dirt roads and bridges.
“It’s been a real eye opener, and I’ve made, during the last four years, a conscious effort to get out and see residents,” he said. “I think it’s really served me well and put me in a good place.”
He’s also keen to share his council experience with his newly elected colleagues and work collaboratively with them.
Elected for a short two-and-a-half-year term, Mr Winchester said his ambition is to “get back to the core functions of council”, looking after bread-and-butter issues like roads and development application waiting times.
“We’ll need to get that right over the next two years before we start broadening our horizons,” he said. “It may be a bit boring, but we need to be getting our core functions correct.”
Mr Winchester is a fiercely proud local with longstanding family ties to the region; hints of a political career surfaced in his youth when he was named school captain of both Queanbeyan East Primary and Queanbeyan High.
His grandmother grew up just outside Braidwood in a township called Monga, while his grandfather was raised in Captain’s Flat, and worked in the mine with all his brothers when it was open.
“I’m a very proud Queanbeyanite,” he said. “I love the place, the people, the characters, and our story, and I’m hoping to be a big part of it going forward.”
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