Lithgow Council awaiting drought funding approval for 13 projects

Lithgow City Council was only informed of the $1 million allocation from the Federal Government on Wednesday, April 3, and after a period of public consultation, the application for funding was lodged on June 5.

Approved projects have to be fully complete and expended by December 31, 2019.

"Indications are good that we will get some funding, but whether that is for all of it or part of it and when we find out about it, we are quite in the dark about," Lithgow City Council's director of people and services Michael McGrath said.

Projects that were submitted for consideration were:

"The projects agreed to by council were derived from community and NSW Farmers Hartley Branch submissions received after council consulted with the Lithgow community during the period from April 18 to May 10 during the Easter, Anzac period," Lithgow City Council general manager Graeme Faulkner said.

"Council is keen to get approval advice as soon as possible, given a requirement for the project funding requires project completion by December 31 which is a much reduced time frame for Lithgow compared to those Local Government Authorities that were advised of their application approval success in excess of twelve months ago."

Councillor Joe Smith said he was happy with the endorsements, particularly the water facilities.

"I think it's a great thing, we are long overdue for water facilities and this will save man hours on sprinkler systems, and save thousands in water costs," he said.

Cr Stephen Lesslie said he was disappointed at how long it had taken council to get to this point.

"The Titanic is able to change course faster then the Lithgow Council," he said.

"I am just disappointed that when this is all done, people will come back to us in time and say 'well we didn't know about it, we didn't hear about it', I have no problem with these recommendations but I would've liked recommendations from the other small towns in the area but that didn't happen."

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Mr Faulkner said there hadn't been a delay in getting this funding for the community.

"Lithgow decided to consult with the public, so we have lost one month in the process...this wasn't a requirement, we didn't have to do that," he said.

"Bathurst council [who had the same amount of time as Lithgow] didn't consult with the public, and they will meet deadline because of that."

Cr Steve Ring said the submissions were not perfect by any means.

"Whether or not we agree on what has been submitted, we need to approve this to get the process moving on," he said.

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