City of Bunbury council to run with 12 members following resignation of Kris Plumb

The City of Bunbury council is set to run with 12 councillors for the next nine months following the resignation of one of its elected members.

In the first ordinary council meeting for 2023 on Tuesday, it was officially announced that Kris Plumb had resigned from being an elected member of the council, citing personal reasons.

During the opening stages of the meeting, Bunbury Mayor Jaysen Miguel formally thanked Mr Plumb for his efforts and wished him the best in his future endeavours.

With the 2023 Local Government elections set to take place in October, councillors unanimously voted to keep Mr Plumb’s seat vacant until the elections take place.

Another factor in the council’s decision to keep the seat vacant was the local government reform agenda which will likely see City of Bunbury councillor numbers reduced by two this year.

Along with deciding not to hold an extraordinary election, councillors unanimously voted to appoint Cr Betty McCleary to the City’s Audit Committee and Cr Michelle Steck to the CEO Performance Review panel.

Following the meeting, Mr Miguel told the South Western Times Mr Plumb’s resignation notice came shortly after a general meeting about his intentions at the start of the year.

“Cr Plumb spoke to me directly in the middle of January thinking about his intentions and we had a meeting just to chat about what he was looking at doing and he said he’d think about it,” he said.

“He then handed in his resignation on January 17 and his resignation was passed with all of the councillors as well.

“We had a general discussion about it in one of our first briefings but it was quite clear that spending $100,000 on an election for a seven-month period wasn’t the way to go.

“That was the rationale for not filling that vacancy and obviously council decided to unanimously go with that tonight.”

It is not the first time the Bunbury City Council has operated with councillor vacancies, having previously held over vacancies for 15 months in 2012-13 following former councillor Cameron Bridge’s resignation, 19 months in 2018-19 following Joel McGuiness’ resignation and for seven months in 2021 following former councillor James Hayward’s election to State Parliament.

Mr Miguel said while any councillor could resign at any stage just like with any job, the council would reach out to Mr Plumb “when the time is right”.

“We all form friendships through council,” he said.

“I’m really hoping he does well and we’ll just continue to get down to business.”