Community & Business
28 March, 2025
25 years in local government
This week marked the 25th anniversary of Councillor Carol Taylor holding public office between the Cambooya Shire Council and Toowoomba Regional Council (TRC).
Cr Taylor was elected as a Cambooya Shire Division 4 Councillor alongside Maxwell Middleton on 25 March 2000.
She was relatively new to the Cambooya Shire, moving with her husband Roger from Goondiwindi two years before.
After being elected to the Cambooya Shire Council as a Councillor in March 2000, she was elected Mayor in 2004.
“They were the happiest days of my life,” she said.
Upon the forced amalgamation of the Cambooya Shire with seven other local governments into the Toowoomba Region in 2008, Cr Taylor was the final Mayor of the Cambooya Shire.
Its original Chairman, serving from 1914 to 1916, was none other than Arthur Hoey Davis, better known as Steele Rudd.
Cr Taylor was subsequently elected as a Councillor to the Toowoomba Regional Council in 2008 and was re-elected in 2012, 2016, 2020 and 2024, serving as Deputy Mayor until 2020.
Upon reaching the special milestone, Cr Taylor confirmed with On Our Selection News that the current term, which began in March last year and will conclude in March 2028, will be her last.
“I want to thank the wider community for their support in me,” she said.
Cr Taylor said having not known a great deal about local government before becoming a Councillor, she was greatly mentored by two CEOs of the Cambooya Shire, Ian Slater and then Ian Stevenson.
She was also mentored through the Australian Local Government Women’s Association, which connected her to more experienced councillors in places such as the Gold Coast.
Among the highlights in her quarter-of-a-century career, Cr Taylor includes a visit to Helsinki to accept an award on behalf of TRC for its Toowoomba Region Flood Recovery Program 2011 to 2016.
The program’s flood retention basins were highly controversial at the time and Cr Taylor even received two death threats over the issue.
“We knew it was going to work so we had to go ahead and do it,” she said.
Another highlight was the re-opening of the bridge at Kuhn Road between Nobby and Clifton which also had been badly flood-damaged.
Cr Taylor is one of the last links to the pre-amalgamation days left at TRC, with Cr Bill Cahill the only other Councillor to have been around since before 2008, serving a 4-year term as a councillor with the Crow’s Nest Shire Council, representing Highfields.
With Cr Taylor having moved in to Toowoomba from her Vale View property a few years ago, Cr Cahill is alone of the ten current councillors and the Mayor to live outside of Toowoomba.
