Last night's Lismore City Council meeting had an overriding theme, councillors fearing they are losing their powers to represent the community.

Time and time again, councillors referred to decisions that were being made for DA's, housing on the floodplain, land development and more by other people and not themselves, namely the NRRC or the NSW State Government.

It was a comment made to the Lismore App by outgoing General Manager John Walker when talking about the role of council and councillors during an emergency, "There's not a lot of role for a council. Not a lot of role for democracy and democratic chambers in the middle of an emergency. That's reality, but I think it upset a lot of them when they realised they didn't have much of a role."

Councillor (Cr) Colby mentioned in his comments about the Lismore Planning Panel, "Ultimately, at the end of the day, you take away the strategic planning, the future of Lismore and everything else and the council then becomes very much rubbish and roads and delivering those sorts of services."

The Steve Krieg ticket won 6 seats at the December 2021 local council elections on that very promise, getting back to basics.

The Lismore Planning Panel (LPP) was on the agenda at last night's monthly council meeting. The LLP was to be represented by a panel of four people. There will be three independent experts selected by the NSW State Government with the fourth a representative from the Lismore community. In fact, councillors spoke of 18 representatives who would rotate as the fourth-panel person.

In the 'Reports to the General Manager' last night, it explained the reason for setting up a Lismore Planning Panel.

On 16 December 2022, the New South Wales Government announced the Lismore Flood Recovery Planning Package which was a suite of measures designed to speed up planning processes and support flood recovery efforts. One of the measures was the formation of a Lismore Local Planning Panel which is made up of independent experts and community representatives that determine development applications (DAs) on behalf of Council and provide advice on other planning matters, including planning proposals. The Minister has requested Council appoint a suitable pool of community members by 24 February 2023. This report outlines the process undertaken to provide a suitable pool of members within the requested timeframe.

Cr Gordon was one councillor looking forward to the control being put in the hands of others when he said about the Lismore Planning Panel, "I think this topic has been eagerly anticipated by this community for a long, long time. "If you look historically at the performance of this council planning has always been a thorn in our side. We don't seem to get it right. It seems to be politically biased, it has been for a long time, it probably is today."

Councillors Bird, Colby, Ekins, Jensen, Cook, Rob and Guise voted to 'fail to constitute a Lismore Planning Panel'.

The next move will be with the NSW State Government.

Another contentious item on the agenda was the adoption of the Community Strategic Plan (CSP).

Contentious because this CSP was first adopted in 2013 and was then readopted by a new council in 2017.

The CSP is a vision for what the community wants Lismore to be in the next 10 years so is due to expire in 2027. Every new council has to formulate a new CSP which has been delayed for obvious reasons since this council was elected in December 2021.

For LCC to comply with OLG regulations it needed to adopt the old CSP plan once again and then look at creating a new CSP after the next local council elections in 2024, only 18 months away.

Some councillors like Cr Rob are strongly against adopting an old CSP and want it updated before the June 30 deadline but as Chief Of Staff Aveley McCann said, LCC has constraints for the work to be done in that timeframe as well as delivering many other programs in the same period.

Most councillors acknowledged that this was not an ideal situation and they would like to update the CSP, especially because the vision of Lismore would have changed a great deal due to the February 28 flood and the ongoing recovery.

In the end, the CSP was adopted with community engagement to begin immediately so that council can get ahead of the game for when the new council starts at the end of 2024.

Councillors also voted to undertake community consultation after the Floodplain Management Committee recommendation Flood Planning Level of 1% AEP Climate Change Level (so a 1% chance of a major flood event occurring in a year or colloquially one-in-a-hundred years) plus 500mm freeboard or extra. So, look out for your chance to have your say on this level.

More councillor rhetoric was displayed when the Office of Local Government's $20 million Funding Project Control Committee recommendations were not adopted.

Terms like, "We're taking back control tonight" and "We're the governing body here" were used as Crs Rob and Guise gave their thoughts on what had happened previously.

Last night's agenda was a little like War and Peace, there was no way councillors were going to get through it in four and a half hours. So, it is back to chambers tonight for round 2 which might be a challenging night for Mayor Steve Krieg.

Last night Cr Cook accused previous GM and Mayor Steve Krieg of being privy to the removal of councillor power through the Lismore Planning Panel with comments like, "I just wonder how long this imposed planning panel was part of the entire game of the interim general manager?", and, "Why was the lead up to the announcement shared with the interim general manager and the mayor but not with councillors."

Could this be the reason Cr Rob has a notice of motion at tomorrow night's council meeting "That council does not have confidence in Mayor Steve Krieg to continue the role of mayor"

The outcome that Cr Rob seeks is for Mayor Steve Krieg to step down from the role of Mayor following a very poor performance to date.

It was not long ago that Steve Krieg was one of the most popularly elected Mayor in Lismore's history with 54.51% of the primary vote. Vanessa Ekins was next with 14.97%.

Another interesting debate in the LCC chambers in Goonellabah from 6pm tonight with Crs Hall and Guise unavailable to attend.