The father of two teenagers won the contest 4-3, after incumbent Bernard Gaffney announced he would not recontest the role.

Cr Trenery had the support of councillors Barb Murdoch, Peter Croucher and Roberta Horne, while Cr Gaffney and the recently-elected Emmerick Teissl backed Cr O'Connor.

Cr Gaffney, a Nationals member, joked he did not follow any Coalition agreement by opting to vote for a Green instead of a Lib.

Cr Trenery is the first mayor from Yackandandah since Jenny Dale in 2004.

He grew up in Albury before moving to Yackandandah and working as a manager in health care and steel businesses.

Cr Trenery, husband to Amanda and father of Georgia, 15, and Harrison, 13, said he was between jobs and would be a full-time mayor.

He said a priority would be unifying chambers of commerce across the Beechworth-based shire which extends from Rutherglen to Tangambalanga.

"They don't talk to each other at the moment, there's not a lot of talking and there's acquired knowledge in each of them so it would be good if they talked together," Cr Trenery said.

"I think liaison would be a smarter way of doing it, rather than having one big chamber, but some sort of mechanism to do that would be great."

Cr Trenery said expanding the Placemaking town promotional scheme beyond Chiltern would also be an aim.

He said he personally did not want to enter the process of seeking an exemption from rate capping which is being introduced in Victoria.

"We have to basically deal with it and have a reduced income," Cr Trenery said.

"We want to keep the services, we want to do everything the same so we'll just have to find efficiencies, it's as simple as that and hopefully not lose too many services."

Tangambalanga-based Cr Croucher was elected deputy mayor 4-3 over Cr Teissl.

The post was initially a three-way contest with Cr Teissl scoring three votes to Cr Croucher and Cr Murdoch's two apiece.

The latter pair then drew papers with Cr Murdoch out when she extracted one with "defeated" written on it.