Last night's Lismore City Council meeting was dominated by 13.1 in the business papers which was the Waste Operation Review.

The review was to be discussed in confidential once the rest of the business paper had been dealt with but on three separate occasions Councillors Guise, Ekins, Bird and Cook tried to get the discussion moved into an open forum and three times it was voted down by Councillors Krieg, Colby, Gordon, Hall, Bing and Rob. Councillor Jensen was absent.

The issue is over the potential privatisation of the Lismore Waste Facility and the potential job losses that may result if the current employees are not redeployed into the council workforce in another capacity.

Councillor (Cr) Cook mentioned that it was too expensive for Lismore City Council (LCC) to replace its fleet of trucks.

The main point from the four councillors was the dumping of the current LCC Waste Strategy without public consultation hence wanting to have the debate in an open public forum. The argument was made that the key points are already in the public domain after the United Services Union has been seen driving a mobile billboard around the Lismore CBD.

Cr Rob said, "The union bullied their way into a decision, like a process that they shouldn't be involved in yet" as he explained why the discussion had to be had behind closed doors which included information the union had been publicising.

"Well, I'm a member of this governing body, I don't know anything about that and they're discussing this in public, it's going to cause all sorts of problems for potential tendering processes and staff and all sorts of things, what we're going to discuss. This has to go into confidential."

General Manager Jon Gibbons put the item into the confidential section of the business papers, which was questioned by Cr Guise, due to sensitive information including people's jobs.

"Where there is always a cautious approach needed, we will always do that," Mr Gibbons replied to Cr Guise.

Mr Gibbons also explained that ultimately, it is up to councillors whether the item was discussed in confidential or in a public forum.

The Lismore Waste Strategy has been an ongoing debate between idealism versus commercial realities.

Cr Ekins referred to the green waste strategy and that Lismore was the first council to introduce the three-wheelie bin system 20 years ago and the public wanted a circular economy for waste so council should take responsibility for the waste we generated and turn it into something useful.

"Taking a profitable business of ours and giving it to a private company", Cr Ekins said.

Cr Rob disputed the profitability of the business through the extra costs of pollution and trucks.

"It causes fires at the waste facility that costs us millions to recover from......"We've got massive costs to collect waste."

The result was the discussion moved into confidential with a 6/4 vote and when Mayor Krieg read out the result of the confidential meeting, as he is required to do, the "Motion was resolved that Council proceed with the implementation of the Balanced Regional Model (C) as presented to councillors during the workshop on 11 September 2023." Once again the vote was 6/4 in favour of the motion.

What is Balanced Regional Model (C)? We hope to find out that detail soon from Lismore City Council.