Residents might have noticed that Dubbo didn't have a young citizen of the year for 2023 while Wellington didn't have a sportsperson of the year.
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This isn't because there were no nominees, in fact there was one nomination for each, but unfortunately the Dubbo and Wellington Award Committee didn't deem them to be of the standard they accepted to win the award.
Dubbo Regional Council mayor Mathew Dickerson said the committee have a "very high standard" for the various awards and would never give one out just because there was only one person nominated.
"Even if there were 20 people nominated, we would have to make sure they're at a standard the Australia Day judging committee are happy with," he said.
The committee is made up of Mathew Dickerson, deputy mayor Richard Ivey and a handful of community members.
"We have always made sure we are comfortable with the person who wins each of those awards and we are proud to say here's our Citizen of the Year or Young Citizen of the Year, or whatever the category might be," he said.
"We like to see nominations come in, we like to see lots of people nominated for the wonderful work they do and so it's just part of the process."
Councillor Dickerson said this wasn't the first time that he had seen an award not given out for a particular category.
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"It's disappointing from a personal perspective because I would absolutely guarantee that there are people in the community who meet the standards that our committee would be happy to give an award to," he said.
In the past five years Dubbo hasn't received more than three nominations for young citizen of the year, while Wellington hasn't received more than two.
Cr Dickerson said he would like to encourage people to put nominations in, so they can get high quality candidates to give the awards to.
But, he would like to see more information in the nomination form so the committee can see the full picture of what the nominee has achieved.
"You've got to think that people sitting on that committee have never heard of that particular person before so you've got to have enough information in there," he said.
"We have people from Wellington who sit on the Dubbo awards committee so they may have never heard of this person."
A full picture of the Wellington nominees helped Cr Dickerson as he didn't know many of the nominees.
"Without a doubt every year I've been involved in judging, I remember the committee saying we need to get more people to put nominations in," he said.
"We know there are good people out there. How do we get people involved? It's a common problem."