Armidale Regional Council Mayor Simon Murray stands firm after vote of no confidence

Simon Murray said having seven out of 11 councillors against him may come down to some councillors not fully understanding what their role on council actually was.

"When it comes down to it, there are those who do not like me. Not much I can do about that," he said.

"But I think genuinely, a number of councillors don't like me saying that the things they want to do are operational matters. I've been reasonably strong on saying, 'No, that's operational, keep out of it.'

"It's primarily because they don't know their role. I've looked at a lot of the Facebook traffic that's been going on lately, and it's discussion around operational matters."

In a statement sent to ACM by one of the seven, Cr Debra O'Brien, on behalf the group, they said they could not go into the most grievous matters that saw them lose confidence in the mayor's leadership, but instead listed several concerns.

They included failing to consult with the councillors, missing out on a funding opportunity for Dumaresq Dam, and being excluded from decision making on the city's water restrictions.

"Losing confidence in Cr Murray as our leader is the one and only reason we need to ask the mayor to step down. We owe a duty to the community to put in our best performance, If we think our Mayor is blocking us and damaging the public interest we must act regardless of criticism," the statement said.

"Taking no action would be even more damaging and neglecting our duty to the community."

Cr Murray hit back, saying he considered governance knowledge to be critically lacking in some councillors.

"I've been talking to our chief executive officer and others about getting some governance retraining, just to reiterate what it is, and we've also been talking about running a number of training exercises for the new council," he said.

"The discussion that Cr Peter Bailey raised last Friday, when he spoke about the organisational structure, well, we don't have anything to do with staff beneath the CEO. The CEO also determines access to staff by councillors.

"It's all in our Local Government Act, it's in our Code of Conduct. It's all there and it's pretty clear. There are seven or eight points about the role of a councillor."

Chapter 9 Part 2 Division 3 Section 232 of the Local Government Act states: "a councillor is to be an active and contributing member of the governing body" to "make considered and well informed decisions."

Councillors should "participate in the development of the integrated planning and reporting framework."

They "need to represent the collective interests of residents, ratepayers and the local community" and "facilitate communication between the local community and the governing body."

Councillors should "uphold and represent accurately the policies and decisions of the governing body" and "make all reasonable efforts to acquire and maintain the skills necessary to perform the role of a councillor." They are "accountable to the local community for the performance of the council."

Cr Peter Bailey said he would prefer to see councillors sit down together to attempt to sort out their differences.

"He sits down as he sees fit, but we've got to judge him by his actions and it's about being far more open. Listening to what we say instead of going off and assuming what the staff say is right, " he said.

"The CEO is in the job and I can't see that changing soon. We've got to work with her and I hope she can learn to work with us. At the end of the day, staff are there to provide recommendations.

"We are elected to represent the community, and from time to time we're not going to agree with the staff. We're there to listen to the recommendation, interpret it and use it as we see fit."

Cr Di Gray said refresher courses in governance were always good things, and finding information had never been difficult for her.

"Governance is at the forefront of what we as a council do, so I would fully support some refreshers, or, for some people, maybe some initial training," she said.

"As for finding information, there were actually briefings about agenda items held by the CEO a couple of days before the monthly meetings, but sometimes they've been cancelled due to lack of attendance.

"They were put on to help support the communication flow to councillors. It's a hard thing to work out what is going to work for different councillors. But if I had any questions about the business papers I made sure I had a conversation with the CEO."

Cr Gray said the opportunity to get information was always there.

"I think the problem that we sometimes have is that people nowadays expect to have some level of spoon feeding of information," she said.

"The responsibility is on the individual, just as much as it is on the people who need to give you the information. It's not a one-way street."