Lismore City Council put the call out today for the community to get behind Lismore's largest and most important community engagement project in its history.

'Our Time is Now' is the name of the project that will create a vision and blueprint for the next 30 years.

Mayor Steve Krieg along with Katherine O'Regan Head of Investment and Growth for LCC were at Heritage Park to launch and give details about the Our Time is Now project.

"We're here to launch one of the most exciting things to happen in Lismore in recent history and that's the vision and blueprint. It's going to be the most widely formatted and most exciting community consultation ever undertaken by the city of Lismore," Mayor Krieg told media today.

"It's going to set a benchmark, I believe in how communities react and engage in recovery and rebuilding after any sort of natural disaster. I firmly believe that Lismore will set the tone for not only how regions, but states and also nationally, recover from a natural disaster."

The basic idea is for everyone in the Lismore LGA, whether you live in Bexhill, Clunes, Nimbin or Wyrallah or if you are young or old, a tradie or a farmer or a CEO, LCC wants to hear your thoughts on what Lismore should look like 30 years from now.

The first step for 'Our Time is Now' began this afternoon when relevant council staff met with 40 people in a stakeholder reference group to discuss who else should be directly engaged.

"Who haven't we got in the room today to help us shape the future," Ms O'Regan said, "At the moment, we've grabbed people from youth to aid from disability to the police and emergency services. So we've gone as much as we can, but it can even go broader than that. So, that group can likewise have a voice and almost set what we've done as we go through this process to see if we're on the right track in terms of touching everybody."

Council staff are hitting the ground running with three online community stakeholder community sessions next week. To get involved, check out the Our Time is Now website.

Ms O'Regan said they will be running a 'close the loop' process which means that when council come up with scenarios they will go back out to the community for further feedback so the idea is refined.

"The traditional approach is quite transactional. It says, we think this, what do you think? This is actually saying every voice in the community, let's gather that and build a plan and let's refine it so that each member of the community should be able to see some of their thoughts, ideas, hopes and aspirations in that particular plan."

The model to be used has not been fully ratified with councillors having another briefing then agreeing on how to proceed. This will include the Community Assembly or Jury concept that has been floated previously, door knocking, public meetings, online meetings and more traditional ways like a survey. Experts like the CSIRO will also be engaged in the Lismore Master Plan as they work through the larger Regional Master Plan for flood mitigation.

It is hoped the consultation part of the Our Time is Now project will be completed by July 2024. Then the Lismore City Council can approach the state and federal government with a complete plan about all aspects of life in the Lismore LGA and ask for funding. The plan will include streams of work around land use, transport, climate change, environmental sustainability and biodiversity.

Towards the end of next year, the physical Lismore Master Plan should be complete.

"Then we can't go to the state government and say we need more hospitals or we need more schools, like Richmond River High School, what's going to happen to that if we move every resident out of South Lismore with all these buybacks that are happening," Mayor Krieg explained.

"We've got to come up with a plan of where we want to structure our essential services. We've got to come up with a plan of what our population base is going to be by 2040 for example, so that we can build the private hospital that wants to go across the road from the base hospital, so that we can establish South Lismore Public School back where it is or do we need to relocate that sort of thing? Councillor Colby's here, he would get upset if I didn't mention a transportation strategy."

"If Lismore is going to house an extra 15,000 people by 2040, and they're all going to work in aged care in Ballina, how do they get there efficiently and quickly without going through 20 sets of traffic lights or roundabouts or the like."

"This all ties in with not only what Lismore will look like and what we want to be as a regional city in the next 10 or 20 years but what our region looks like."

Mayor Krieg said that the residents of Lismore need to know that this is part of a long-term plan that will take time.

"It's been said by every level of government that the rebuild and the recovery of Lismore is a 10 to 15-year project. Now, we're not even at year two yet. We're frustrated at the length of time it's gotten us to even get this far to launch this vision and master planning process. There are a number of reasons why, but we're here now. This is the very start of it."

"We talk about community engagement all the time. Council, in the past, has made decisions based on the feedback of five or six residents. That's not good enough for this. We've got to reach thousands, tens of thousands of people, get all of that information, get the common ground, put that together and then go to the experts and say help us here."

"If we say as a community that we want to move the CBD that's a totally different brief to us. As an organisation, saying we're going to keep the CBD where it is. If 25,000 people say it's a much better idea to move, then we've got to take that on board and look at that. But if we just give it to the experts now and say design whatever the hell you want. It's just not going to work."

It is well known that some previous LCC strategies and plans were completed and left in a drawer never to be seen again. Why is this different?

"As the mayor, and I'm sure every councillor standing here and every councillor that's not here, we need to change the focus from developing a strategy that will sit on a shelf to developing a document that is a living document that can actually be implemented. I mentioned the dual carriageway (from Ballina) that is something that can be delivered on and that's up to local government to lobby and drive that funding and to make sure that it's achievable but we don't know what the community wants us to lobby for yet."

"I'm confident that the state and federal governments are supportive of the rebuild and the recovery of Lismore, and I think if we come up with a really solid master plan to see good growth, good employment opportunities, good educational opportunities, good health opportunities, all the things that governments are designed to provide for their citizens, then I can't see why there'd be much pushback from the state or federal governments to fund things."

Ms O'Regan added that the goal is to also engage with the state and federal government throughout this process so they can adjust their funding cycles to make it more likely to receive funding.

As for the eleven elected councillors including Mayor Krieg, are they unified in their support of this Our Time is Now project?

"Everyone's on board with developing a master plan and a vision for Lismore and I would say 90% of the community are on board with developing a master plan and a vision for Lismore. It's something you know really in hindsight, we should have looked at in 2017 after the 2017 flood, the first time the levee got breached. But, you get lethargic and you get distracted and things don't happen and for whatever reason things haven't happened since the 2017 flood."

"We've got new council, we've got new councillors, as we keep getting reminded even though we've been there for two years now, that want to see Lismore grow, they want to see Lismore thrive, they want to see the LGA as one of the standout LGAs in the country.

"I wouldn't be doing my job as the mayor if I didn't want to make Lismore the best regional centre in the country and that is what drives me every single day and every councillor who sits in that chamber has the same opinion, they want to see Lismore be the best that can be. Now, we might have different ideas of how we get there or different ideas of what Lismore looks like, but I firmly believe, and I can only speak for myself, but I firmly believe that every councillor wants to see the best Lismore that it can be."

The cost of the Our Time is Now project is over $200,000 and funded by the state government through the NSW Reconstruction Authority.

For now, click on the Our Time is Now website for more information and get ready to participate in any public or online meetings. Three of which are next week:

• December 18 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm (click here to book)
• December 19 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm (click here to book)
• December 20 9:00 am – 10:00 am (click here to book)