A petition demanding Clarence mayor Brendan Blomeley step down is being emailed to residents across the municipality and many say they have no idea how the campaign got their email address.
The petition wants a vote of no confidence in Blomeley and asks him to quit before the October council elections.
It has been set up online through Google Forms and has surfaced on a community Facebook page called the Concerned Citizens of Clarence City Council.
No individual has put their name to it.
The petition argues Blomeley breached the local government code of conduct and the Local Government Act.
It claims he made biased decisions, did not treat people fairly and brought the council into disrepute.
Whoever is behind it wants the deputy mayor to run things until the election.
The petition says 1,000 signatures would force the council to debate the motion and hold a public meeting.
Residents have raised the alarm about how their email addresses ended up on the list.
The council’s chief executive, Ian Nelson, said the council had nothing to do with it.
“The petition has not been distributed by City of Clarence and we have not provided residents’ emails to whoever is distributing the petition,” Nelson said.
He said there was no reason to think the council’s records had been hacked.
Nelson said the anonymity behind the campaign made it hard to give residents answers about where their details came from.
Blomeley has rejected the campaign outright.
“This is gutter politics. Gutless and weak. Our community deserves so much better,” he said.
“It is easy to throw mud – it’s not easy to govern the second most populated city in Tasmania.”
Blomeley said he was disappointed nobody had put their name to the campaign and likened it to anonymous trolling online.
He said he would run again in October.
“If the Clarence community don’t want me as their mayor, then that will be decided in October,” Blomeley said.
The petition needs 1,000 signatures to trigger any council action.
