A Wellington woman who started her own small business at 27 and went on to become an advocate for the local community has announced her intention to contest the upcoming local government elections.
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Jess Gough said she would run in the Wellington ward and if successful, bring a focus on coming up with solutions to the role of councillor.
"I have a small child, I want to make sure that this town is still viable and can give opportunity when she grows up," the Wellington Business Chamber president said.
According to Ms Gough, Wellington would prosper if people worked together and put personal differences aside.
"I just want to see a better relationship between council and Wellington businesses," she said.
"It's more productive to be collaborative moving forward, as opposed to being negative."
Ms Gough suggested council could improve the way it communicated with Wellington residents and promised she would be a councillor who would aim to meet regularly with the mayor and senior council staff "to be on top of what's happening in the area".
"A lot of the time things aren't being told to the community," she said.
"One of the biggest problems is the empty shops in the main street and I want to make sure that council can get these building owners to get the buildings up to a standard so they just look decent.
"Even if it's empty it still needs to look okay."
Ms Gough said she also wanted to see council boost support for businesses battling the drought, by continuing promotions like 'buy local or bye local', which reward people for shopping at local businesses.
Voters in Dubbo and Wellington will go to the polls to elect a new council on September 12. Incumbent councillor Vicki Etheridge is the only other person who has declared their intention to contest the election.