Business owners in the Lismore CBD have expressed their concern about crime and antisocial behaviour disrupting businesses and causing public safety issues.

Councillor (Cr) Gianpierro Battista brought an urgency motion at yesterday's Lismore City Council's extraordinary meeting to ask NSW and local police, Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin and Member for Page Kevin Hogan to advocate for short and longer-term options to reduce the amount of unsavoury incidents in the CBD.

Cr Battista's motion asked for council to:

1. Write to the NSW Police Commissioner and Richmond Police District highlighting safety concerns from CBD businesses and requesting a blitz
2. Send a copy of the correspondence to Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin and Federal Member for Page Kevin Hogan
3. Include in the next budget an agreed amount of funding exclusively designed to increase safety in the CBD.

There was debate between councillors on the right way to approach finding a solution.

Cr Battista said a police blitz was needed for a number of days or weeks to provide "a very strong deterrent".

Cr Knight-Smith said she felt it was just as unsafe now as it was when she was a young woman walking in the CBD. "I don't know that more police is the answer. I mean, tough on crime has been shown time and time and time and time again to not work," she said.

Cr Guise agreed, saying he didn't want to see a "law and order sledgehammer cracking the nut sort of approach focusing solely on police task forces."

Another point of Crs Knight-Smith and Guise was the increased number of mental health, alcohol and drug cases being observed would only lead to more people in custody and not solve the long-term problem.

Mayor Krieg joined the debate by saying that sometimes you have to treat the symptoms before you go to the cause. "I agree is having a taskforce up here for two weeks the best case situation. No, it's not, but our community is asking for it, and it's up to us to lobby for that support as a matter of urgency."

Cr Gordon said he had been working in the CBD for 35 and that it is the worst it has ever been. He has resorted to walking his staff to their car for safety reasons. "In the short term, we need police," he said.

Cr Dalton-Earls agreed that council should be looking for a long-term solution; however, in the short term, "I think that this is an appropriate action moving forward".

Cr Waters then asked Cr Battista if he would consider adding a point four to his motion, which Cr Battista accepted:

4. Ask NSW Police to consider a community policing strategy be established for the CBD

Cr Battista concluded by saying he is doing this for the businesses of Lismore. "We have businesses here that are struggling already. They are struggling. We've gone through two floods, a cyclone where people had to move everything."

Although councillors may not have all agreed on the way forward at the time, they did merge two ideas with short—and long-term solutions.

The motion was passed 10/1, with Cr Guise voting against.

In a small win for business owners, councillors voted to schedule a workshop in the next month to explore options that would freeze CBD rates in another attempt to help our struggling local businesses after both levels of government chose not to help them financially following the loss of trade from Tropical Cyclone Alfred.