The bills just seem to get longer: Council calls for up-front disaster payments

The council is millions of dollars out of pocket for works that will eventually be covered by governments and insurers, councillors heard at their February meeting.

With insurance and grants the council is to be reimbursed, the total could be about $7million, the meeting heard.

Director Stefan Murru said his team would be tracking the amount monthly "as of now".

"It's getting difficult, we're doing huge amounts of work every month and then the bills just seem to get longer and longer and longer for us to get reimbursed," he said.

"We've brought this up with other levels of government.

"We've brought this up with our insurers and they have acted, they've paid us the $1m (owed) and have promised to reimburse us on a monthly basis.

"We are pushing actively but there are huge amounts outstanding at this point in time."

Mayor Phyllis Miller said she and General Manager Steve Loane had been voicing the council's concerns.

The next step, councillors resolved, will be to ask the Australian Local Government Association to take up the fight for up-front payments at a national level.

Everyone was feeling the same pain at the first community leaders forum under the Central West Recovery and Resilience Package.

"We brought that up, we had our first meeting yesterday with the recovery agency and that was a big point: all of us are suffering the same," Mayor Miller said.

Forbes will call for an 80 per cent up front payment of estimated disaster recovery costs from governments rather than paying for - as an example - State road repairs and invoicing the government afterwards.

"The General Manager and I have made an appointment with the CEO of statewide insurance and we're going to speak to her about the slowness in paying us," Mayor Miller added.