Lismore mayor Steve Krieg has released a statement on a decision made by Lismore councillors that will have major ramifications on the way waste services are operated in the Local Government Area.
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![Lismore Waste and Recovery Centre. Lismore Waste and Recovery Centre.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/154120782/b41ccd58-0f23-4158-8128-97b125b25223.jpg/r0_59_1772_1055_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The majority of councillors voted at last week's council meeting to pursue Option Model C. A rescission motion on Tuesday night was defeated.
A document detailing the findings of a review was also attached.
Mayor Krieg said:
"Council has resolved to further investigate how we might progress with a new waste and resource recovery model and strategy.
"As has already been stated, the Waste Service Review report was long overdue, and the most comprehensive review into our waste and resource recovery services and plans, ever undertaken by council.
"The report provided transparency to all our elected members on Lismore's current state, identifying every challenge we face and providing a recommended pathway to get things back on track to being financially, environmentally, and socially sustainable.
"This is not just about domestic waste collection services; it is a much bigger body of work to ensure the health of our region and the sustainability of our services well into the future.
"The reality is, with successive leadership changes and through successive natural disasters the overall operations of our waste services and resource recovery for the city is not where it should be.
"We are being honest about that with our community because it is our responsibility to deliver efficient and sustainable services. No one would expect us to continue to operate with multi-million-dollar deficits year on year.
"As we have stated from the beginning there are no Lismore City Council staff job losses proposed as part of these actions.
"Council has received the report into the sustainability of the city's waste and resource recovery operations and has now endorsed further work be undertaken to explore the feasibility of the proposed Option Model C.
"The reality is however, there are still several steps and separate decision points for council before we can adopt an alternate model of operating.
"Our priority continues to be our people and will continue working with our teams over the coming months as we start to formalise what needs to be done to transition toward more sustainable operations for our waste and resource recovery."