REDLAND City Mayor Karen Williams finally has an opponent for the March 19 election.
Redland Bay father of two Greg Underwood, 61, has decided to run for the city's top position.
Mr Underwood was Redland council's general manager for planning from 2005 to 2011.
He was also the city's chief executive for four months in 2010 a temporary "fill-in" role but did not want the position full time and was happy to return to the Strategic Planning department.
He moved to the state government planning department after the council restructured and his contract was not renewed.
His anti political donation stance will force him to fund his own campaign which he said he launched in an effort to "return balance" to decisions made about development applications.
The catalyst for him to leap the divide from bureaucracy and join the political fray was an October council decision to relax rules protecting koala trees on a block of land at Muller Street, Redland Bay.
The decision made way for a higher-density residential sub-division.
"I’ve had a lot of people talk to me over the past 12 months regarding decision making saying they weren't happy with the decisions that they thought they were loaded to go with the developer rather than the community interest," he said.
"I met with council officers and Julie (Talty) on that issue and they really just didn't want to know about putting conditions on the development.
"As someone who has been putting conditions on development for 40 years, you always try to get the best outcome for the community by putting reasonable conditions on.
"The development needed to go ahead but they just didn't seem prepared to get the best community outcome and that's been voiced to me in the past over other decisions."
If elected, Mr Underwood said he would work to ensure vested interest groups - whether greenies or developers - got balanced not favourable treatment.
He said it was unfair on ratepayers that the mayor was not in the chambers during debate or voting for many important decisions due to conflict of interest after accepting donations.
Reticent about making promises, Mr Underwood said if elected, his first actions would be to review the 2017-18 budget and then scrutinise any changes made to the new planning scheme.
"I'm concerned about what the new planning scheme might bring with this council and they are considering this at the moment," he said.
"I’m not against development, I just think we need to be tailoring development into the right locations and not just arbitrarily saying all urban residential development is good because it's not for Redlands."
A vocal advocate for the Toondah Harbour project, Mr Underwood said he had played a role in getting the city to buy some of the foreshore land to safeguard it for public use.
He said the only urban development outside the current planning scheme that he would support was a technology or learning precinct.
He said he would have liked to have seen all blocks at Shoreline larger than 600sqm for the 4000-dwelling project.
“I’m not in favour of expanding the urban footprint for housing but I am realistic about previous approvals,” he said.
“If, for example, Shoreline is not approved, I will work with the council and the developer to moderate the design and, in particular the medium/high density aspects and small-lot content east of serpentine Road,” he said.
Cr Williams, a first-term mayor, won the 2012 election in a landslide, defeating her opponent Melva Hobson with a 20 per cent margin.
Cr Williams congratulated Mr Underwood for standing for mayor and urged him to discuss his plans with residents.
“My administration has delivered the first surplus operating budgets in over 15 years while at the same time delivering the lowest rate increases in south-east Queensland, abolishing tip fees, reducing debt and working to deliver landmark, job creating projects like Toondah Harbour and Weinam Creek.
“We've done all these things while ensuring council is open and accountable to Redland residents.
