Yet they were rocked by a protracted and spiteful debate over the city’s first mosque, plagued by infighting and censured for bullying, drink-driving and a graphic tweet that sparked nation-wide outrage. 

So how will the sixth City of Greater Bendigo council be remembered? Former mayor Rod Fyffe – who has served as a councillor for more than three decades – said it had left a legacy that would shape the city for years to come. 

“This has been the council which has achieved the most of all those I've been on,” Mr Fyffe said. “There’s been huge physical infrastructure achievements and a lot done on the policy design front as well. So I think that this council will be remembered as one that built enormous foundations for the success of Bendigo going into the future – foundations based on physical infrastructure, but also because of the planning policies that we’ve adopted that will last for the next 10 years or more.”  

The former mayor listed the new $26 million Ulumbarra Theatre and $30 million Indoor Aquatic Leisure and Wellbeing Centre as the city’s major infrastructure achievements of the last four years, as well as upgrades to the airport ($15 million), art gallery ($7.5 million), Bendigo Stadium ($16.5 million) and tennis centre ($4 million). On planning policy, he cited transport and residential strategies. 

All six former councillors who responded to the Advertiser for this article also listed building and planning as major achievements. They were equally unanimous on the lows – bitter disputes on council and, of course, the mosque 

Whipstick ward’s James Williams said many positives which came out of the last council began with an independent review he helped instigate in 2012. Most of the negatives came after the mosque decision.

“I was disgusted with the behaviour and the language,” Mr Williams said. “It is disappointing when you travel overseas to hear Bendigo held up as a racist place. It was never a decision about race, colour, religion, creed – and nor should it have been. That was a tough one for us all, we stuck together – most of the councillors – and worked very hard to tow that line.”

Two councillors, however, did not toe that line, most prominently Lockwood ward’s Elise Chapman.

Ms Chapman cited her role in helping save the Golden Square Pool from demolition as one of her proudest achievements. But she made national headlines for other reasons. In February last year, she sparked a storm of controversy after sending a graphic tweet to a woman who supported the mosque’s approval.

Ms Chapman is challenging a councillor conduct panel ruling that ordered her to apologise and maintains she was expressing an opinion “on her own time,” not as a councillor. She said the incident had seen her subjected to “bullying and harassment” – but won her loyal supporters. 

“I think I’ll be remembered as someone who was relentlessly attacked ... throughout the community,” Ms Chapman said. “In the last week, I’ve had so many people coming up to me saying – ‘we stand with you ‘Chappy,’ jeez you’ve got some balls’.

Nor was she the only councillor to fall afoul of a conduct panel. Whipstick ward’s Peter Cox was ordered to apologise to her and Eppalock ward’s Helen Leach for his conduct as mayor in the fallout from the mosque decision. The first person to serve as mayor in the last council, Lisa Ruffell, was also ordered to apologise to the pair for her handling of an incident involving them and a young woman with Down syndrome.

But it was Eppalock ward’s Mark Weragoda who faced the most serious censure from a conduct panel, when he was temporarily stood down last November for drink-driving – a charge he initially denied. 

“I certainly regret what happened, as I said, I was a bloody idiot,” he said. 

But Mr Weragoda hoped to be remembered for his work on council, including sitting on the Art Gallery board responsible for securing the Forever Marilyn exhibition, which this year injected more than $13 million into the region. Similarly, Mr Weragoda said the controversy surrounding one of council’s flagship projects for 2016 – the new organic waste kerbside collection service – would pass and the service form part of the council’s legacy. Mrs Leach though, feared the council’s legacy would be of commitments to big-spending projects. 

“Too much money’s been committed to present and future capital investment, including strategies and plans – we'll never have enough money for half of these things,” Mrs Leach said.

She said council would be remembered for a lack of “discussion and open mindedness” around the mosque and the decision to demolish the Kangaroo Flat Leisure Centre to make way for the new aquatic centre. That was something she said had been partly addressed by what she hoped would be her legacy – an $89,000 citizens’ jury she would like repeated every four years.

Lockwood ward’s Barry Lyons, however – like most of the other councillors – held up the string of big-spending budgets up as proof of the previous council’s ability to work with state and federal governments and secure outside funding. 

“Over the last two years we've spent in the order of $60 million to $80 million and three quarters of that has come from outside the area, which is sensational for the ratepayers here,” Mr Lyons said. 

He said the building blocks had now been laid for an influx of people – but worried its residents would overlook that work when recalling the class of 2012-2016 councillors. 

“It is really sad, the impression that a lot of people have got about this council,” he said. “I hope it will be remembered for being very progressive and for setting so many things up – but I think it will also be remembered for some of the downsides, for all the bickering.”.