The Kiama Council is thinking about future generations, according to Mayor Neil Reilly on Kiama Community Radio.

“We have to have a generational mindset. You can slap up some cheap houses, which will fall down in two years' time but that’s no good,” Mayor Reilly said.

“We have to start thinking about housing for future generations. We have the Akuna Street development, which will take some of the pressure off housing,” he said on the Breakfast Show on Tuesday, 21 May.

“Council also has areas of landholding where with the simple stroke of a state government pen, we could build in Spring Creek.”

Mayor Reilly flagged the Bombo Quarry area had the capacity for 3000 houses.

“Anything we do in that area is going to be a vast improvement. I have a mayoral minute which will seek from the landowners, Boral and Transport NSW, to plot the future with us.”

Last year, the Council wrote to the NSW Planning Minister and requested an update on the Bombo Quarry site to be used for development as part of the Illawarra Shoalhaven Regional Plan 2041.

The NSW Department of Planning replied that, “any future housing or employment is unlikely to occur in the short to medium term.”

As The Bugle reported at the time, “with residential development at the site years away – and Business Illawarra’s recent Affordable Housing Solutions report showing 20,000 key workers are experiencing housing stress right now – calls for short-term fixes to Kiama’s housing crisis are likely to grow louder.”

Mayor Reilly told listeners the Council was not anti-development.

“I would rather be building up in the centre than out at the edges. I don’t want to lose those green rolling hills for future generations.”

“Mexican jumping beans” – former council finances

Mexican jumping beans - accounts with a life of their own.

Mayor Reilly explained the complexity and danger the council faced more than two years ago when invalid accounts disguised dangerously low liquidity.

“In the past, we had a set of financial figures which on the surface, looked okay, such as our internal and external restricted reserves.”

“Those reserves were moving around like Mexican jumping beans and were being used to pay for this and that."

“In the end, we came up with an operations budget, which was so low on cash we only had $200k to pay for power and wages … that was frightening."

“The CEO and myself spoke to TCorp, as at the time we owed them $60M (now $15M). We said something has gone very wrong. Money had been used for the construction of Blue Haven Bonaira.”

Mayor Reilly said they now have to use some extraordinary methods to get Council finances going again.

“Blue Haven consolidated costs us about $3M a year – about $11K a day,” he said. “We were lucky we had some land to sell for a rainy day and it has been raining not only from the sky but from our finances.

“That’s why we are doing service reviews on the leisure centre, the waste business, holiday parks and more. We will make them much more efficient and more valuable to the community. They will take the pressure off the community and generate monies for Council.”