This morning marks a significant shift for Lismore City Council when the first daytime council meeting (for some considerable time) gets underway at 10am.

At last week's first council meeting since the September local council elections, a resolution was passed to move the monthly meetings (second Tuesday of each month) move from 6pm to 10am, this includes extraordinary meetings.

Lismore was the only council in the Northern Rivers to hold its meetings at night, until today.

As was expected, a rescission motion has been moved by Councillors Big Rob, Adam Guise and Jasmine Knight-Smith to try and return the meetings to 6pm.

Last week's vote was 7/4, with Councillor (Cr) Harper Dalton-Earls voting with Crs Krieg, Hall, Gordon, Bing, Jensen and Battista, so it is unlikely the rescission motion will be successful.

The two main items on the agenda at the Extraordinary Meeting are for councillors to view and adopt two areas of Lismore City Council's financial position as of 30 June 2024.

In general, Council needs to submit an annual report as part of its Reserve Policy. This provides guidance on their 'internally restricted' funds. These are funds that council can use for any purpose, as opposed to 'externally restricted' funds, which have a specific purpose, government grants fall into this area.

The policy categorised reserves as follows:

• held on behalf of other parties
• Special Rate Variation
• carry forward or revote works
• emergencies
• economic development and growth
• public infrastructure and building assets

Council has identified $36.967 million in funding is required in internal reserves; however, as of 30 June 2024, Council did not have sufficient unrestricted cash to fund these reserves.

The Acting Chief Financial Officer said this is a timing issue only. At the date of the reserve calculation, 30 June 2024, Council was owed $25 million for grant expenditure incurred and not reimbursed. So, when these grant funds are reimbursed, the funds are applied to fully fund the identified reserves of $36.967 million.

In accordance with the Reserves Policy and reporting requirements Council can only recognise reserves that are held as cash, therefore the Internally Restricted Reserves held as cash was $14.026 million as at 30 June 2024.

The second item on the agenda is for council to 'form an opinion' on the Audited Financial Statement for the year ended 30 June 2024.

As you would expect, the February 2022 big flood is still impacting council's finances. However, the area of most concern is the long-term financial plan to move the Net Operating Results Before Grants Contributions Provided for Capital Purposes from the red into the black or at least break even.

There have been some positive signs in this area, with an improvement of $5.3 million ($-13.4 to—$8.1 million), but Lismore City Council still needs to make further improvements over the next four years.