Lismore City Council held an extraordinary meeting yesterday to finish the May agenda before next week's ordinary June meeting takes place on the 10th.

Long-suffering drivers who use Dunoon Road may see some action after a motion proposed by Cr Jeri Hall easily passed a vote to upgrade Dunoon Road, including the Dunoon Road/Alexandria Parade intersection/roundabout in the 2025/26 budget.

As Cr Hall said, "I don't actually think that I need to speak to this, because you'd have to live in a cave or a jungle not to realise how terrible this section of our road is. And it is quite heavily utilised by basically everyone in the northern end of our LGA, the Modanville's, Dunoon's, Dorroughby's, Rose Bank's, and The Channon.

"I think a lot of people don't realise that even in a minor to moderate flood, when Bangalow Road gets cut off, Woodlawn Road gets cut off, that is the only road into town from anyone living in the Clunes', the Dunoon's, the Modanville's, the Dorroughby's. So, it is quite heavily utilised.

"The condition of it is so poor. The intersection is so poor. There's no line marking. The potholes are atrocious. As I said, I don't feel like I needed to speak to this, because you'd have to be living under a rock to not actually notice the state of this road in our LGA. And I'm hoping that we all support this unanimously."

Cr Harper Dalton-Earls highlighted that other regional roads in the LGA also need repairing, such as Nimbin Road and Corndale Road. "Where does it end?" he said. "I just think that it is important that we make sure that the staff are doing regular maintenance budgets, regular reviews of the conditions of the roads, and that we look to fix these particular regional roads."

Cr Big Rob made the point that Dunoon Road is on the SES list as one of the last roads out when a flood hits Lismore.

Cr Adam Guise asked for a briefing by council staff about the roads budget and its priorities, as there are a lot of damaged roads. "I can appreciate the sentiments for this one, because we all have our favourite roads that we'd like to see restored to a safe or better condition," he said. Cr Guise was the only person to vote against the motion.

(An image of the work to be done on Dunoon Road in council papers)

Josh Smith, Council's Executive Leader, Strategic Manager & Project Director, then clarified that a workshop has been scheduled for councillors in the first week of July, and that the 20225/26 budget has already been through council's prioritisation matrix.

Cr Hall denied Cr Guise's claim about people putting forward their favourite road in her right of reply.

"I also think that there's a massive difference between this portion of road, given that we've got the showgrounds, sale yards, Richmond Rivers going up there, this is going to be quite a key piece of road infrastructure that we need to ensure is done properly."

Another Councillor motion saw Gianpiero Battista propose Council apply a 100% discount to Sections 64 and 711 so that people who have large blocks of land with one house that has a sewage service can add a second dwelling without paying the $16,000 contribution fund to council. The motion included not-for-profit community groups in the Lismore LGA.

The policy would end on 30 June 2027, then be reviewed. Councillors would receive a report every six months to see the number of applicants and the costs.

Cr Battista said he came back to council to see Lismore grow. "And I'm trying to do my best to work out policy and action to make sure that people are incentivised to do something about their houses or their blocks with the sole purpose to get Lismore growing again."

The purpose of the motion was to take an old large block of land with a house at the front of the block, and incentivise owners to put a second dwelling on the back of the block that could be lived in by a family member, like grandparents or children, or it could be rented by a student or emergency worker, thus increasing the rental stock in Lismore.

Cr Battista said it would be affordable because generally the second dwelling will be one bedroom, maybe two, to keep building costs down, and smaller buildings have a lower rent.

"People can't afford it anymore, but maybe something like this could generate interest in people building in the backyard for something. Maybe a reasonable price, $250 or $300 a week."

The motion received support from Cr Dalton-Earls, "We need to encourage more housing. And as Councillor Batista has reasonably pointed out, these may represent more affordable rentals. They're not going to be huge unit blocks or anything like that, and even if they were, units are typically more affordable. So I think this is exactly the type of small area that council has where we can encourage housing. And as everybody knows, with the supply and demand, the more supply we have, the less rents will ultimately be."

Cr Andrew Gordon addressed the cost issue of building another dwelling and the savings they would make.

"Any consideration when you go to do a project, I guess the major consideration is always cost. Can I afford to do it? This is a massive incentive for those who may have thought about it. I was only speaking to someone last week that said that the cost for their application was around $15,000 odd, so if we were able to relieve them of that burden, then perhaps the incentive is to just do it.

"During the flood in 2022, as an agent, we lost 140 homes out of the rent roll, and we're one of several agents in town now. Those homes aren't being replaced. No one's building rental stock. They're just not. This is a massive leap forward in providing relief for that market."

Cr Knight-Smith was concerned about the fact that this doesn't help people trying to get into the housing market; however, she supported it in principle.

Cr Guise said it was a private market-oriented way of dealing with affordable housing, and ultimately was the only councillor who voted against the motion (with Cr Virginia Waters absent).

In his right of reply, Cr Battista then made a direct remark about Cr Guise and The Greens.

"That's what The Greens are all about, negating every possible idea that can bring hope for growth in Lismore. That's what they want to do. They want to shut this city down completely and don't offer any solution. And they're talking about affordable housing all the time, and that's crap, because they don't want affordable housing. They want their type of affordable housing, which is multiple occupancy, where people pay one rate for every property instead of five or six. That's their idea. And then it comes back and says, Oh, we're going to miss out on money to build our roads. What about all the multiple occupancy? They only pay one rate, one rate."

The motion was easily passed again.

The next Lismore City Council meeting will be 10am next Tuesday, June 10, with public access starting at 9am.