By Sahar Foladi
Cr Eden Foster has been elected as City of Greater Dandenong’s new mayor with Cr Lana Formoso as deputy mayor.
There was no opposition between Cr Foster and the title of mayor after being nominated by Cr Jim Memeti and Cr Angela Long, though three councillors were absent from the 10 November meeting.
The new leadership duo is looking forward to the next 12 months with a great focus on mental and physical health.
“Health is a big one, with deputy mayor Formoso’s background in physical education and my background in mental health combined, we can work on addressing that,” CrFoster said.
“We know that our municipality is not so healthy and active, so we’ll work on ways to improve that.
“I think us as a duo we can work really well together and actually make some changes.”
Cr Foster grew up in Springvale and Noble Park, joined the council in 2020 and worked closely as deputy mayor with the previous mayor Jim Memeti.
“I thought the time was right for me to put myself out there and to be able to push the agenda that’s really important to me, fairness and equality. I think the time is right for me to push that further.”
Cr Memeti had encouraged Cr Foster to run for the role and expressed his full support.
“The new mayor was my deputy last year, and she really excelled in that position. She’s very dedicated and passionate about our community and I think she’ll do a fantastic job.”
Cr Formoso has lived in Greater Dandenong all her life, is a teacher in Dandenong High School and raising her two sons.
It’s difficult enough to be a mother and to also have a full-time job but having her son Luka diagnosed with leukaemia in April has made this year her most challenging.
“It was beyond everything that you could ever comprehend as a mother as a human bring.
“Seeing my son deteriorate so quickly and become so sick has been just horrendous.”
Now elected as deputy mayor, Cr Formoso said juggling family and work life would be difficult but not impossible.
“Juggling family life is difficult for every mother but I’ve got a very supportive family, my mother, brother, my husband and some really good friends that help me.”
This year, Cr Formoso has raised more than $78,000 for Monash Children’s Hospital and more than $25,000 for Children’s Cancer Charity.
“We ended up doing a lot of fundraising as a way to not only give back to the community but to give me comfort and purpose in what I was doing.”
She said there would be times where she’d have to work remotely to look after her son, which had been the case many times this year.
“Obviously I’m going to be a huge advocate for any means possible to be able to juggle the work-life-family balance.”
Three councillors were absent from the meeting. They were Cr Rhonda Garad who was overseas for work, Cr Tim Dark and Cr Bob Milkovich.
“As elected representatives, everybody should attend as many meetings as possible, I know Rhonda is overseas and I can’t speak for the other councillors,” Cr Memeti said.
“I’m not sure why they’re not here, but when we do work together, we can actually achieve very good results for our community.”
Cr Foster said she would communicate with all councillors in order to work together.
“Communication is important. Including everyone in the communication is key to getting everyone on board.
“Selling the message and hearing from them as well about what they would like for the community. And being open to that, not closing off on other people’s ideas.”
Cr Foster said she has an open door policy for community members to reach her and express their needs.
“I really want to encourage community members to reach out to me because I’m their voice.
“And I can only be their voice if they reach out to me.”
