Last Tuesday, Lismore City Councillors adopted a suite of documents that will shape the city's future over the next 12 months, 4 years, and 10 years.

Many of the documents have been rolled over since the early 2010s, so council staff have no clear direction when making recommendations to councillors.

Now, the Community Strategic Plan (CSP), the Operational Plan, Asset Management Planning, Long Term Financial Plan and more have been reviewed and adopted, so they are fit for purpose for Lismore in 2025.

In his Talking Lismore podcast, Mayor Steve Krieg thanked council staff for the work they have done over a pretty long journey.

"The pleasing thing for myself and the majority of the councillors was the fact that they're actually refreshed documents. They're new, they're fit for purpose. They're designed to help or to guide Lismore, a modern Lismore, a 2025 Lismore. For too long now, we've rehashed some of these documents, we've rolled them over, and they haven't really been fit for purpose. And given the 22 flooding events and cyclone Alfred, we really did need to re-examine how we're doing business, how we see Lismore into the future? So to get those documents through council with no changes was really, really pleasing," Mayor Krieg told the Lismore App.

"The overwhelming majority of of people that I speak to want to see Lismore get back to that vibrant regional center that we remember of the '90s and the early 2000s, when you could walk around the CBD and you could pick your music venue and and you felt safe, and the place was alive and it had a real vibrancy.

"How do we get Lismore back to where it needs to be, as that regional hub, that regional centre? We look around the state, and every region has its little capital. You go out a little bit further west, and you've got the Tamworths of the world, and the Dubbos and the Oranges and the Bathursts, the Alburys, those sorts of places have that regionality about them. They're experiencing growth, they're experiencing the employment booms, they're experiencing the housing booms.

"Lismore, for too long, has been overlooked, and a lot of it has to do with what's written in these plans. It directs the staff as to what the public want to see, and so I don't ever shy away from taking out the affordable housing terminology and replacing it with diverse housing.

"We need a range of diverse housing, and I'm on record as saying I'd love to see our riverbank lined with multi-story apartment complexes. Why can't our nurses and our health workers and our retail sector, and all of that, those great people, work in Lismore, live in and around our CBD in a third or fourth storey one or two bedroom apartment, if that's what they're looking for?

"Our families, as they're growing, if they want a rural residential subdivision, very similar to what North Casino offers, why can't you get that in Lismore? You know the townhouse complexes, the good old quarter-acre block, we need to offer the whole diverse strategy of housing options.

"With supply comes affordability. It's a natural progression, and what these documents now do is direct staff to provide those options to the developers, to the people looking at investing in Lismore. That is the direction that the majority of Councillors want to see Lismore heading."

With more diverse housing options in Lismore's future, our city needs a sewage treatment plant that can handle Lismore's future capacity in terms of a growing population. In Friday's news article, we discovered that the state government has budgeted around $39 million to rebuild the East and South Lismore Treatment Plants, when the previous government had promised $108 million. You can read the full story here: Is Lismore's Sewage Treatment Plant rebuild and future growth under threat?.

Lismore has loss-making assets that have been under review since the 2022 big flood. The Lismore Airport is one of those assets.

"An asset like an airport is very dependent on the population base in a lot of respects," the mayor explained. "There has been a lot of theory thrown in and around the airport, and is it worth it? And I was only thinking about this the other day, I remember when the Northern Star was printed as a daily, and a group came in offering to buy the airport, I think it was Mayor Dowell's day at the time, and the thought of the day was if there's one group, then there must be hundreds of groups that want to buy it, and let's put it on the open market.

"We all know that particular group that expressed interest in the Lismore Airport have since moved to Toowoomba and has turned Toowoomba into an absolute gold mine. Is that the solution for Lismore down the track to privatise the airport, or something along those lines? I can't answer that just yet, but what I am still very strongly advocating for, and it's my role, is to have discussions with commercial airlines to start their passenger flights back into Lismore, and that's something we're looking at.

"We've also developed a really flood-proof master plan for the airport as well, which requires significant investment, like everything. It's basically moving what's there to another site, another flood-free site. But again, these are plans that have been drawn up and are very much theoretical at the moment.

"The first goal is to activate that precinct and and attract those businesses, like Matt, who does the helicopters, for example, an outstanding business, and how do we support him to grow his business and to use that, along with the flying schools that operate out of there, and encourage a few more private users to to use our facility? But certainly in the background, and for the last 12 or 18 months, we've had some very robust and meaningful discussions with some commercial airlines about reactivating our passenger flights."

"We are not going to have a commercial flight in the next three or four months, but it's certainly something, given the talks that we've had, they're looking at changing their methodology for creating a route. They normally go off historic data, but in Lismore's case, they're prepared to look at our forecast data, which is really, really good, and that's why I say we need that growth. We need that economic development, and that then makes our airport a viable asset in the future again."

The Lismore Property Strategy has been running for about six months now. What is the latest?

"The team driving that has done an exceptional job. You talk about that suite of documents that we just got through Council, having a really effective and an up-to-date asset management plan, so that you actually know what you own and what you're responsible for.

"For too long, our council staff and our councillors have been flying blind because they just haven't had the knowledge of what council was responsible for. So, this property strategy is really critical, so that we can offer best value, fit for purpose, uses for our assets.

"If you want to take a controversial one again, let's look at the Richmond River Historical Society. There is a volunteer group and a vital organisation in the Lismore fabric, but is it best practice to have them in the CBD, in the municipal building, or do we have other assets that are available for them that is more affordable for them to be able to use?

"You have to understand, there's something like 47 or 48 community groups, like the Richmond River Historical Society, that council provides services to. It's a big number, and so it's like doing a big jigsaw puzzle fitting all the pieces into what is best for the organisation, what is best for council, and what is best for ratepayers in the long term.

"If you don't know what you own, how are you supposed to do that, and so I'm really looking forward to seeing the outcome of the Property Strategy.

We've got something like 200-odd properties that council owns. Do we need 200 properties? Do we have to be property managers for all of these facilities? Or is there a better, and a cheaper, and a more economic way to do it? We talk about keeping people's rates as low as we can, well, council needs to develop another income stream other than rates to be able to keep mum and dad ratepayers' bills as low as they can be. So yeah, we might have to sell, or we might enter into a public, private partnership with a developer that wants to build some affordable housing on a block of land that we own, or something like that. They're all things that we can look at for the future.

This week, Mayor Krieg, Deputy-Mayor Jeri Hall and two other councillors will be travelling to Canberra for four days to attend the Australian Local Government Association Conference.

"I'm meeting with the new Emergency Services Minister Kristy McBain. I've met Kristie a number of times; she's a lovely person, but this is the first time in her role. I'm also catching up with Brendan Moon, the head of NEMA (National Emergency Management Agency) and Catherine King. I'm also going to hit Albo up, he promised me a beer at the lodge last time he was up for Alfred. So I'll put the hard word on and see if I can't get in there as well.

"It is really important to see what other councils right around the country are dealing with, but it's really important when you talk about advocacy and finding that shortfall in budget allocations for things like our sewage treatment plant. If the state can't cough up, maybe Kristy McBain can find some money in the federal budget for us.

"I know that there'll be an element listening to this going, Oh, another junket for the mayor, but it really is an opportunity to keep tapping Canberra on the shoulder and saying, we're only just starting in the Lismore rebuild, and we need the money and the support to keep flowing."

You can listen to the full Talking Lismore podcast by clicking the link via the Lismore App.