Shoalhaven Mayor Amanda Findley has confirmed she will not stand at the September 14 council election.
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Cr Findley revealed her plans in Newcastle on Wednesday, May 1, while attending a Hunter Community Forum meeting.
She revealed she had not told her constituents that she was stepping down, but said her departure was "a healthy thing for democracy in Shoalhaven".
"I'm standing down. I haven't told my community that. Well, most of them know anyway. It's the worst secret ever," Cr Findley said.
She has been on council since 2008, and has served two terms as mayor.
And she contrasted her position with that of long-serving representative and former mayor Greg Watson.
"I've got a councillor who's celebrating 50 years of continuous service on Shoalhaven council in four months," Cr Findley said.
"He's turned up, he's committed, and he's done what he's done for his community.
"But I would put it to people that we should be looking at limited tenure because, around that capture as well, there is a risk for elected members to start acting like bureaucrats."
Cr Findley was invited to attend the meeting to talk about the Shoalhaven's experience with democracy and planning in local government.
"The Hunter Forum invited me up there because they saw that some of the things that Shoalhaven Council had done were a success, when it came to democracy," she said.
"That was particularly around transparency and how we put as few items as possible into confidential, so the community have a wider view of all the things going on in our city."
The forum was also interested in the way Shoalhaven councillors held discussions with the region's communities through the Community Consultative Bodies.
However Shoalhaven Council's accountability extended beyond the elected representatives, Cr Findley said.
"The community strategic plan is being enacted to ensure the delivery plans and operational plans line up with what the community has told council that they want to get done, and if they're not getting those answers that they make the complaints to the office of local government and demand answers," she said.
Cr Findley used the occasion to call for more changes to the way local government operates.
It started with "avoiding the noise of the negative people and those that want to take people down and want to turn candidates off," she said.
"Without your council hearing your voices ... you have no say in being able to hold those people to account.
"It's really important that we find ways to ... change government to make it more inclusive," Cr Findley said.
"In our council, there are 13 who sit around the table, and I can tell you that brains trust - it may be a mirror of the community, but it's not a true reflection.
"We need the true reflection (and) we need to keep the door open."
- with Simon McCarthy
