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DUBBO mayor Mathew Dickerson should resign and not stand for the upcoming council elections, according to Dubbo Ratepayers and Residents Association president Greg Mohr.
Mr Mohr said the community was disgusted with the council’s decision to tell fruit seller Dennis Crowley to pack up his fruit stall on Cobra Street and never return.
Mr Crowley was told to move because the council acted on a complaint from an anonymous caller who was unhappy with the unsightly nature of the stall’s setup.
“If this is the biggest issue for him (Cr Dickerson) and if he cannot solve this simple problem without causing such a community uproar, he should resign and not stand in the next council elections,” Mr Mohr said.
“There are bigger fish to fry in the city than a man selling oranges. The council just picked on a poor defenceless man.”
Mr Mohr said Mr Crowley sold cherries last summer and the council did not move him and he questioned why he could not sell oranges.
He said the council had used “double standards” dealing with Mr Crowley and they should “leave the bloke alone”.
Mr Crowley was not hurting local businesses and should either be returned to Cobra Street or the council should help him find an alternative place, he said.
“He didn’t set up a great big stall and block traffic, he was trying to make an honest dollar selling oranges,” he said.
Mr Mohr said the council had used Mr Crowley’s fruit stall as a distraction to residents for the “over the budget and out of time” Apex Oval.
There were roadside stalls across Australia, he said, and the council should look at the bigger picture.
Cr Dickerson told the Daily Liberal he had already made his view clear in the mayoral column and did not wish to comment further.
In his column he said: “If council threw out all the planning laws of the state and allowed people to park a truck on a street and sell whatever products they wanted, our society as a whole would be the loser.”
The NSW Local Government Act states in section 68 that a person can only engage in a trade or business on community land with the prior approval of the council.
“A person who fails to obtain an approval or who carries out an activity otherwise than in accordance with an approval is guilty of an offence,” the Act states.