Shoalhaven Mayor Amanda Findley has revealed the high personal toll of leading the council for the past eight years.
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Cr Findley was first elected to council in 2008 and has served two terms as mayor.
Her marriage ended in 2019 right in the middle of her years as mayor, and Cr Findley said the time demands of council's top job "absolutely" played a role in the break-up.
She said she was not alone in that sort of impact.
"When you look at the statistics for people who enter politics - they show politics has got a high casualty rate when it comes to people and their partnerships," Cr Findley said.
That was just before the Black Summer bushfires hit the region- a time Cr Findley described as "the beginning of the end with the natural disasters".
In the past four years there have been 15 natural disasters in the Shoalhaven, and she said each one "takes even more time away than the regular time as mayor".
"That takes its toll on people," she said.
![Shoalhaven Mayor Amanda Findley has revealed the reasons behind her decision to step down from council t the September 14 local government elections. Picture by Glenn Ellard. Shoalhaven Mayor Amanda Findley has revealed the reasons behind her decision to step down from council t the September 14 local government elections. Picture by Glenn Ellard.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/204165774/db637dfc-5283-4698-8941-3b0c3eee729e.jpg/r0_36_4032_2563_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
"People don't see what goes on in the background and how much is required to go into that sort of stuff."
The stress and demands of the past four years and the repeated natural disasters were behind the decision to walk away from council after 16 years.
But even without the natural disasters "lots of things around you suffer - your family suffers, your friends suffer, the people that you want to be spending time with, they don't get to spend time with you," Cr Findley said.
Instead, "I want to leave on a high note and not be burnt out, and not leave burnt out," she said.
At 54 and after 30 years "serving family and the community" Cr Findley said she "would like to go and live some life".
She said she had received strong feedback to her decision to walk away from council and not seek reelection on September 14.
"It's been really good to have fantastic support from the community for making the decision that I've made," she said.
"There's always reasons that you can stay, because there's always work to be done - it would be fantastic to see through the LEP review, but you can't just have the next project as an excuse to stay."
Cr Findley said she favoured limited tenure for councillors "because I think that people need to get out of the way and have a break. It doesn't mean you can't go back in the future, but you just need to get out of the way and give other people a go, because it's an amazing opportunity to be a community servant in this way, and it's good for other people to see that they can do it too."
She said there were many highlights to her time on council, and "I could give you a shopping list of infrastructure that's happened over the eight years."
But instead of that "One thing that I'm really proud of is the number of awards the Shoalhaven has won over the past few years in the area of waste and sustainability, because I think that shows that the council is really trying hard to bring about the change that the community wants to see."
Cr Findley said she was also proud of the professionalism and standing of council's staff.
She said she had maintained "my personal commitment to respect and integrity" during her time on council, "and I've treated the staff there with the respect and integrity that they deserve because there are many people there who are highly professional when the councillors are not".
While many in the community took a negative approach to council, Cr Findley called on them to pay attention to the good things happening around them.
"If people actually looked around them to see the really good things that are happening in our community, I think that everyone in the Shoalhaven would have a smile on their face because it's a pretty special place," she said.