COL Murray has never been afraid to say no.
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The word 'maybe' isn't in the mayor's vocabulary, but come to him with a sound, realistic idea and he'll do his best to say yes.
Cr Murray has never been a man of in-betweens, it's his measured decisiveness and strong relationships that have made him Tamworth longest continuously serving mayor with 11 years in the top job and four terms on the council.
It's how he knows that now is the right time to bow out.
"It's part of my DNA, but I like to pick the time when I depart, that's important to me," he said.
"I think you know in your own heart, and I was having a chat to former mayor James Treloar a couple of years ago and he said, 'don't worry Col, you'll know when the time is right'.
"Well I think the time is right for me."
A retired businessman, Cr Murray was elected to the first amalgamated Tamworth Regional Council in 2004.
He'd just sold his businesses, and after years on boards, in committees and local sports organisations he felt he had more to contribute.
It wasn't going to be easy. With 48 candidates at his first election, Cr Murray was the only person elected who hadn't been on a council before the merger.
"It was a big learning curve for me to be involved in local government," he said.
"It was a lot more churn and a whole lot slower than what I could ever have dreamed to get something done in local government. It took a few years to work out how the system worked and how to use the system to get things done."
Five years in, Cr Murray finally felt he had the relationships with bureaucrats to bring big projects to life.
The Northern Inland Centre of Sporting Excellence, Westdale Wastewater Treatment Plant and Effluent Reuse Farm and Split Rock to Barraba pipeline were just a warm up.
He went on to open The Youthie, the $2.2 million playground at Bicentennial Park and championed the purchase of a Sydney CBD-sized block of land that would years later become Tamworth Global Gateway Park.
Everything he has achieved in 16 years in local government he puts down to hard work and strong relationships.
"I think for me, everything I do I try to do to the best of my ability, I like to work hard, that's what my parents taught me and it's been the centrepiece of everything I've done," he said.
"My strongest achievement I believe has been keeping the council and elected representatives focused; the staff, the directors, working with the general manager on the strategies and basically keeping everyone running in the same direction.
"That's the most important role of any mayor anywhere."
And, general manager Paul Bennett knows it more than most.
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Cr Murray became mayor just two weeks after Mr Bennett started. The pair sit down every morning to make sure they're on the same page.
"Suddenly we were at the helm together, we had to collaborate on everything - there were no preconceived ideas of what we were going to do or what was going to be the focus," Mr Bennett said.
"I think Col has really strong values, he values things like honesty and integrity above everything.
"Ethically, he always wants to do the right thing, it doesn't necessarily have to be the popular thing - he just wants to do the right thing.
"I was inexperienced and had worked in small councils as a general manager, but Col helped me improve my maturity and the way I dealt with other people. That's reflective of the leadership skills he had in business and the way he treated his staff and engaged with customers and clients."
After amalgamation, both were left with a "big, cumbersome organisation" and had to work to drop old identities and mindsets to unify the new, regional council.
For Cr Murray the focus has never been just on Tamworth. He sees every small village as an important cog in the wheel of a regional economy.
He believes Tamworth has a responsibility to provide services to people outside of its patch and work with councils across the region.
"We're conditioned to think about things just simply in our patch and in my view it's simply not acceptable to do that," he said. "Moving forward that will become more important and I believe I've seen that change over the last 10 years where it wasn't as critical for a council to think like that."
It's that mentality that helped drive the development of the Australian Equine Livestock and Events Centre, secure $7.4 million in funds for the intermodal rail hub and the creation of Blueprint 100, which Cr Murray considers the council's single most significant initiative.
The responsibility of holding the community purse has never been lost on him, and the commercial realist has always strived to make the right decisions.
"I've worked for myself since I was 21, 1972 was the last time I worked for a boss so you're conscious if you want to spend some money you've got to earn it first," he said.
Peter Resch and Bruce Logan have been directors for as long as Cr Murray has been on council, and said in all that time he's one of the best they have worked with.
"He has a lot of respect with the councillors, community and staff and he didn't get that for being mayor but for the way he behaves," Mr Resch said.
"He has a great strategic mind, he doesn't have to give you a long explanation of what needs to be done - he says it in a few words and gets the message across strongly.
"He's the one who walked into an executive meeting and told us to stop comparing ourselves to Dubbo and Lismore and start looking at Toowoomba, not long after we produced Blueprint 100 to get us to a population of 100,000. He plants the seed and generates those ideas." Mr Logan said being mayor of TRC has prestige about it.
"Anyone who wants to take on that roll has big shoes to fill - the next person will take a while to get out from his shadow I think and set their own path," he said. But, Cr Murray has never lost sight of the importance of a strong team.
"One thing I'd like to say out front is one person on their own cannot achieve anything in local government you simply can't, you have to have support of your fellow councillors," he said.
While he still has a lot to offer, he said it's time to focus on his family.
"My wife has sat at home for the last 17 years I've been on council and there's not one time I went to the cupboard and there wasn't a nice, clean, ironed white shirt," he said.
"She's always been there, Carol is a fairly private person and now it's time to share a bit more with her."
The pair plan to hop in the caravan, meander through the wildflowers of Western Australia and try some new red wines from the Margaret River region.
But for now, he's gone fishing.
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