Don't diss the mayor and his deputy or the editor will censor?

Having a quick read of 'The Egg Timer' yesterday I noticed a letter to the editor which had an odd segue, so on a hunch I got in touch with the writer.
Seems this letter was published 18 days after it was emailed and 10 days after this year's Clarence Valley Council mayoral election.
Yesterday's belated version in the newspaper has been snipped and shaped, with the red highlighted section now missing. Hmmm..........

Glass houses vulnerable to stones

With good reason Clarence Valley's Deputy Mayor Jim Simmons is feeling aggrieved [DEX, September 18].
It seems someone has been using the entrance to his business as a public urinal.
What is fascinating about Cr. Simmons complaint is that he attributes this activity to an unnamed person or persons who possibly oppose his stance in the matter of the proposed new supermarket in Maclean.
Does he mean a well-known local developer who would have benefited from this supermarket or one of the many local residents who have voiced their objections to any loss of public space? Surely not! The Lower Clarence doesn't usually stoop to such behaviour.
Perhaps Cr. Simmons should look both closer to home and also further away for his culprit.
The clue may be in the timing "Thursday through to Sunday evenings....10.30pm and about 4am".
Leaving aside consideration of a disgruntled client, his business is in the immediate vicinity of a curbside bus stop which caters for local, regional, intercity and interstate private buses and CountryLink services. Some of which pickup and put down within the hours Cr. Simmons has identified. The same hours which see both pubs and public toilets close in Maclean.
However, this is September - the mad month at Clarence Valley Council when councillors begin to jockey for position in the mayoral elections.
Much better to be seen as a beleaguered shire councillor bravely facing a hostile community. Rather than one who is deputy mayor in a highly dysfunctional council where good governance and transparency appear to be missing in action, the Mayor and Council in the Chamber have lost any semblance of control over local government bureaucracy, official record keeping can be highly misleading, trust funds are misused, cost over-runs are just shrugged off, developer contributions are not always collected, senior staff think it acceptable that an official response to a good faith budget submission can be "so what" [Clarence Valley Council, 21 June 2010], certain councillors and management give the distinct impression of being in the pocket of at least one large multinational company and the mayor of this supposedly non-aligned shire council uses his official title to formally endorse a candidate at the August 2010 federal election ["Why we're backing Janelle Saffin",August 2010].
Cr. Simmons should not be as quick to point a finger at the Lower Clarence community - glass houses are notoriously vulnerable to stones and at last count the rumour mill had complaints to the NSW Division of Local Government, Dept. of Lands and ICAC concerning Clarence Valley Council climbing steadily during the time that Williamson and he have been at the helm.

JUDITH M. MELVILLE