Big shoes to fill

I REFER to the letter “A call to stop horsing around” (News, 23 June).
It should have been titled BIG SHOES TO FILL. I know this is very long but I do believe that it is worthwhile writing in support of the councillors mentioned, and it couldn’t be written in short form in reply to Mr Steve Beardon’s criticism of them.
Crs Amanda Stapeldon, Wayne Smith and Geoff Ablett are doing a great job as councillors of our wonderful area.
They spend more of their personal time attending lots of community events and also hand lots of money back into our local community.
Surely, we as residents don’t begrudge our elected councillors, spending their own training allowance, for their own safety and to participate in an event that has been active within our community for the past 20 years. This is part of our history.
If it is not already compulsory, surely, it should be, for all the councillors to undertake the lessons for their safety, otherwise, it would be an occupational health and safety problem and one I am sure you, Mr Beardon would not like to think about the ramifications from that, as I would presume they would be classified as employees of the City of Casey.
As for Crs Ablett and Stapeldon running for the state election, I do not see that it is any of your business if they ran or not as I believe they would have both done a great job, if their actions as councillors are any example.
I suggest they were in the running to help out the local and state communities. I would presume that it would have cost them both more money just to run, apart from their extra time they spent on the campaign trail, while, I must say still supporting the people of Cranbourne in their roles as councillors for the City of Casey.
It looks to me that you, Mr. Beardon, are commencing your run for council elections very early. You have had nothing but negative things to say when it comes to Cr Amanda Stapeldon, so obviously you want the hardest-working councillor in our area out of the running.
Surely you must have something positive to say about the manner in which Amanda has handled herself during and before her time in council. Maybe its time for you to start picking on some of the councillors that don’t do as much as Amanda has done and still is doing for our local community.
You big-noted yourself in this article, whereas in fact you were involved, but it wasn’t just you that did all the work, give credit where credit is due, you might have done some introductions to broker the deals with the three tiers of government, not travelled at ratepayers’ expenses and you were not the only councillor to donate most of your council allowance back to the community.
I wish it noted that Amanda has, since being elected and during the lead-up to the previous council election.
Mr Beardon I think if you try to knock Cr Amanda Stapeldon off as one of our councillors, I think you will have to have very big shoes. I for one will not vote for you, as I believe you couldn’t fill Amanda’s shoes, let alone your own.
Judy Davis,
Cranbourne.