Lismore City Council (LCC) are meeting today with a number of key issues on the table.
Saturday saw around 150 locals rally and object to the demolition of Lismore’s heritage Big Scrub houses and today Labor Councillor Harper Dalton-Earls bring amotion looking at ways to more effectively salvage materials from these houses.
Cr Dalton-Earls is seeking to investigate a partnership with the NSW Reconstruction Authority (NSW RA) ‘to ensure valuable materials such as timber doors, leadlight windows, and decorative architraves are salvaged and made available to the local community’.
‘Many of these homes have been cleaned and lived in since the 2022 flood and should not be automatically classified as flood waste,’ said Cr Dalton-Earls.
‘Currently, there is overwhelming community concern that these materials are being removed solely by private contractors, going to landfill, without community access or benefit. Redirecting these items to local reuse centres would promote sustainability, reduce waste, and honour community heritage. Also providing those still rebuilding from the flood with the opportunity to purchase high quality materials.’
Move the meeting time
Councillor Adam Guise (Greens) is moving a motion to revert meetings back to Tuesday evenings at 6-10pm than having them held during the day.
In the agenda Cr Guise says that, ‘evening meetings to enable councillors who work in the day to attend meetings and allow members of the public to attend to speak and watch online more conveniently’.
Speaking to The Echo Cr Guise also highlighted that when events like cleaning up after floods and cyclones needs to happen this tends to be done during the day. Then councillors are available in the evenings to attend meetings.
Santin Quarry
There is a notice of motion on the outcome of the Land and Environment Court (L&EC) challenge by the community against LCC’s approval of an extension to Santin Quarry. The community won the case and the L&EC declared the development application ‘invalid’.
Cr Guise is seeking that the LCC provide details on the costs of defending the DA in court and clarifies who will be responsible for those costs.
‘The community members who brought the court action had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to uphold the law so the court case is a vindication of their conviction,’ said Cr Guise ion the agendas councillor comment.
‘Council has incurred significant legal expenses in defending the action as a second respondent. To ensure that Council is not out of pocket for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Council should seek to recover these costs.’
However, Guise does not specify who these costs should be recoverd from.
The staff comments highlight that, ‘the first and second respondents also have Appeal rights’. The first respondent is Santin Quarry owner Michael Bruno Santin and LCC is the second respondent.
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