Council business papers reward reading to the end of the item. The headline decision here is a strategy adoption, which is the sort of thing that gets a supportive paragraph and no scrutiny. The resolution immediately after it asks for something quite different, and the two sit under the same agenda number.

What was adopted

Resolution 270826/5, moved by Cr Michelle Bailey and seconded by Cr Eva Ramsey, adopted the Ballina Shire Homelessness Strategy and placed it on exhibition for public comment, with any submissions to be reported back. It also resolved That the General Manager hold discussions with Mary's Place and Orange Sky in respect to providing infrastructure and in kind support for the delivery of services.

The council's own report is clear about why a council is doing this at all: While responsibility for housing and specialist homelessness services rests with State and Federal Governments, local councils are often required to respond to the impacts of homelessness through the management of public spaces, along with wellbeing initiatives, customer service and regulatory functions. That is an honest description of the position councils are in, and it is worth keeping in mind when reading what follows.

What was asked for

Resolution 270826/6, moved by Cr Phil Meehan and seconded by Cr Bailey, directs the council to write to the State Government seeking five things. Four of them are what you would expect from a council that has just adopted a support strategy:

  • Increased and ongoing funding to frontline support agencies including NSW Homes, Department of Communities and Justice and NSW Health for short and long term housing, practical support and access to health care;
  • increased and ongoing funding to community service organisations providing financial counselling, employment pathways, health education, shelter and food;
  • a resource package and education campaign to help communities understand homelessness and help councils and state agencies manage it day to day;
  • and to Ensure that there is consistent messaging from the State Government regarding the rights of homeless persons, the operation of NSW law, and the support pathways available.

The third item is the one that is not like the others:

Improved powers for NSW Police to require rough sleepers to vacate public spaces where there is evidence of anti-social behaviour, unsafe activity, excessive waste generation, environmental damage or infrastructure damage.

The conditions are doing work in that sentence and should not be skipped: it is not a request to move people on for sleeping rough, it is a request tied to listed conduct. Equally, excessive waste generation is a lower bar than anti-social behaviour, and what counts as evidence of it is not defined in the resolution. Both of those things are true at once.

The number the council is working from, and the one beside it

The report gives a figure for the scale of the problem: The 2026 Street Count, conducted by the State Government, identified 25 people experiencing homelessness within the Shire, compared to 64 people recorded in 2025. The council does not oversell that fall. Its own report notes in the next breath that the Street Count provides a point-in-time measure.

Set against it, in the same report, is what one service is doing. Of Mary's Place: The service assists approximately 350 people each week and provides more than 500 meals and beverages at no cost.

Those two numbers are not measuring the same thing, and we are not going to pretend the gap between 25 and 350 is a contradiction. A street count records people sleeping rough on one night; a meals and support service reaches people in housing stress, in insecure housing, and on low incomes as well. But they are printed four pages apart in one document, and the smaller one is the number that will be quoted. If you are reading the strategy, read both.

Who voted

Both resolutions were carried with all councillors present voting in favour. The minutes record the same four as absent and not voting on every item of the meeting: Cr Therese Crollick, Cr Simon Chate, Cr Erin Karsten and Cr Kiri Dicker. Six of the ten councillors were in the chamber, with Mayor Sharon Cadwallader in the chair.

That is a quorum and a valid unanimous vote, and nothing here suggests otherwise. It is worth recording because unanimous reads as settled, and a request for expanded police powers over people sleeping rough is the kind of decision a reader might reasonably expect to have been argued over. On this occasion it was not, in front of six councillors.

What happens next

The strategy is on public exhibition, and the resolution says submissions on it come back to Council. If none are received, the resolution provides that no further action is required, so the exhibition period is the window in which a resident's view is guaranteed a hearing. The letters to the State Government do not require any further council decision.

How we did this

Every quotation and figure comes from two documents we downloaded and read in full: the agenda and the minutes of the Ordinary Meeting of Ballina Shire Council held on 27 August 2026, 40,791 and 5,584 words respectively. The resolution numbers, movers and seconders, the record of who was absent, and the wording of all five requests are from the minutes. The Street Count figures, the point-in-time caveat, the Mary's Place service figures and the description of the council's role are from the agenda's report for item 8.2.

An access note, because these documents are easy to miss. Ballina publishes through InfoCouncil, which returns 403 to a plain scripted request but serves the PDFs to a normal browser user agent. The pattern is predictable: under a folder for the year and month, the agenda is the meeting date as DDMMYYYY between OC_ and _AGN.PDF, and the minutes are the same with _MIN.PDF. The minutes name the next ordinary meeting as 24 September 2026.

Councillors are named here only in their public roles, as movers, seconders and as the record of attendance, which is what the minutes are for. No person experiencing homelessness is identified. We have not sought comment from the council, from Mary's Place or from Orange Sky; this is a reading of a public record, and where we have drawn an inference it is labelled.

Sources

  1. Ballina Shire Council, Minutes of the Ordinary Meeting, 27 August 2026 (PDF, downloaded and read 28 August 2026): resolutions 270826/5 and 270826/6 in full, including the Mary's Place and Orange Sky direction and all five requests to the State Government; the unanimous votes; the record that Cr Therese Crollick, Cr Simon Chate, Cr Erin Karsten and Cr Kiri Dicker were absent and did not vote; the attendance list and Mayor Sharon Cadwallader in the chair; and the next ordinary meeting date.
  2. Ballina Shire Council, Agenda of the Ordinary Meeting, 27 August 2026 (PDF, downloaded and read 28 August 2026): the report for item 8.2, including the description of the council's role relative to State and Federal responsibility, the 2026 Street Count figure of 25 against 64 in 2025 with its point-in-time caveat, and the Mary's Place service figures.

Spotted an error, or know more about how this is working on the ground? Tell us and we will check it against the papers and log the outcome.