DEPUTY Mayor Nicole Jonic stared down accusations from the Mayor about failing to declare a conflict of interest, demanding a formal apology in last week’s council meeting.

Cr Jonic belatedly declared a possible conflict of interest in Thursday’s meeting on an item discussed in the previous meeting on council’s procurement for online advertising.

During that meeting Cr Jonic was the only councillor to vote against a council commitment to spend more than $1 million over the next three years on online advertising with California-based tech giants Facebook ($230,000 a year) and Google ($50,000 a year) and also Australian-based Seek ($65,000 a year).

Cr Jonic told that meeting she was not comfortable with an increase in spen