The Greens have dumped their sitting Ward 1 councillor, Kerry Brown, for September's council elections in favour of Katoomba academic, Dr Sarah Redshaw.
The Greens voted at a party pre-selection meeting on Wednesday, March 4 after an earlier vote, in February, was challenged.
Cr Brown's fellow sitting councillor, Brent Hoare, was endorsed to run again in Ward 2.
And Kingsley Liu, who has been a candidate in two state and two federal elections, has been pre-selected as the Greens candidate for Ward 3.
In a brief statement, Blue Mountains Greens convenor, Nick Cowlishaw, and secretary, Noel Willis, did not even mention Cr Brown.
The statement read: "The Blue Mountains Greens are putting forward a unified team of Sarah Redshaw (Ward 1), Brent Hoare (Ward 2) and Kingsley Liu (Ward 3) who will work to win the votes of our community at the September local council election."
Mountains political veterans the Gazette spoke to could not think of a prior occasion when a first-term and high profile sitting councillor had been rejected as a candidate by his or her own party.
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Cr Brown was elected in September 2016 with 27 per cent of the vote in the Ward 1, just behind Labor's Don McGregor who received 29 per cent.
She has been an active local councillor, prominent in many groups and advocating for many individuals and many causes in the Upper Mountains.
More controversially, Cr Brown has also been involved in the public inquiry into asbestos management at council and other issues. She made a number of submissions to the commissioner, Richard Beasley SC, and appeared personally, and later with a lawyer, to question witnesses in the first two sessions of hearings.
She alleged that Stuart Liddell, who was at one time acting general manager of council, and the current CEO, Rosemary Dillon, were employed as "captain's picks" by the mayor to ensure that the top management positions were held by people sympathetic to council's asbestos response.
But in a report just released, Mr Beasley rejected Cr Brown's allegations.
It was also revealed at last week's council meeting that Cr Brown's submissions about the inquiry have cost council more in legal fees than the costs of responding to the submissions of council assisting Mr Beasley.
Cr Brown disputes that and has said she will write to the CEO for clarification.
It is unknown if she might consider standing in the September elections as an independent. She did not indicate her future plans in a statement issued late on Wednesday afternoon.
Her replacement, Dr Redshaw, is a Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University.
Dr Redshaw said on behalf of the Green team: "If elected we will ensure the Blue Mountains Council properly addresses our key challenges of climate change and its consequences, like extreme bushfire seasons, the problems of over-development and the protection of our natural environment upon which our local economy depends."
In the other wards, Cr Hoare was comfortably re-endorsed. He finished fourth in Ward 2 in the 2016 poll with 17 per cent of the vote but was successfully elected after the distribution of preferences by the ALP and Liberal candidates.
In Ward 3 in 2016, the Greens polled just 14 per cent, well behind Labor (31), Liberal (30) and the independent Shae Foenander (25 per cent).
But Mr Liu, a human rights lawyer, engineer and former investment banker, is a campaign veteran.
He stood for the Greens for the seat of Blue Mountains in last year's state election and was the Greens candidate for Macquarie the same year.
Mr Liu also ran for the Greens in the seat of Mulgoa in the 2015 state poll and in Lindsay federally in 2016.
There were no Greens candidates for Ward 4 in the Lower Mountains, where the mayor, Mark Greenhill, last time polled more than 50 per cent of the vote.
