Former Redlands councillor Murray Elliott will run again for Division 7 at the 2024 election and has vowed to restore good public policy if elected.
Mr Elliott works in Capalaba MP Don Brown’s office but spent more than two decades on council before being voted out at the 2020 election.
“When you tell people you have been there for 23 years, people think I’ve had enough but it is time I sort out what I am sick of seeing,” he said.
Mr Elliott said he was committed to ensuring council’s decisions were fully transparent.
“A good public policy is what makes the world turn around and is all about delivering value for ratepayers,” he said.
“At the moment the council is approving projects of hundreds of millions of dollars which they do not know how much they are going to end up spending.”
He took aim at council for its investment in several major projects, including the Birkdale Community Precinct and the Heinemann Road sport and recreation hub at Mount Cotton.
“I just see wasted money on projects that are fluff projects rather than the real projects we need to do,” he said.
Mr Elliott said he wanted to reintroduce a regular community newsletter if elected, allowing the public to receive information on where their money was being spent.
“Council is so afraid of its present performance, or lack thereof, that all community newsletters have been removed pre-2012 from the council website,” he said.
“When I first started in 1997, I paid for my own newsletter, and they were great.”
Mr Elliott said he would push for the capital and operational budgets to be added as an appendix to council’s budget papers.
He believed this would provide greater transparency on where ratepayer money was being spent.
“Across the city and in Division 7, council has failed to deliver any significant investment in infrastructure in the last four budgets and in some cases has removed infrastructure and not replaced it,” he said.
