Source: Newcastle City Council
Building better roads, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, planting trees and shrubs, improving parks and playgrounds are just some of the highlights in Newcastle City Council’s Annual Report.
Acting General Manager GRAHAM CLARKE says the last financial year was extremely challenging but very rewarding and the 2006/2007 Annual Report provides a snapshot of Newcastle City Council’s activities and achievements for the past financial year.
"The year ended as it began, with a challenge to the administration to demonstrate ongoing efforts to reduce costs while at the same time maintaining the high level of services the community has grown accustomed to."
Source: Great Lakes Council
NSW has the distinction of being the worst funding State in Australia for contributions towards public libraries – by a country mile.
The State’s contribution now stands at around 7% of total running costs of public libraries. This is a sad decline from 1980, when State contributions stood at 24% of running costs.
Now the State Government has cut a further $1.16 million from funds towards public libraries, making a bad situation even worse.
Source: Hunter Valley Research Foundation
As the second round of the Hunter Valley Research Foundation’s ground-breaking Wellbeing Watch survey nears completion, Hunter and Central Coast councils are beginning to explore how their residents rate on the wellbeing scale.
The Foundation’s Wellbeing Watch – begun as a 50th anniversary initiative in 2006 – involves collecting information annually as part of an ongoing study to help understand whether people are able to afford their day-to-day needs, are able to successfully balance work and family, and whether they feel part of their local community. Responses from 1,500 Hunter householders will be compared where possible with a further 500 collected from respondents in the balance of NSW.
Source: Newcastle City Council
Council projects such as the ECO¶STAR™ program and Water Harvesting and Reuse project, continue to strengthen Newcastle’s position as a leader in environmental sustainability.
Last Thursday I had the pleasure to launch the new Water Harvest System at Newcastle’s Stockton Tourist Park, which will be used for irrigation of the park and in the future flushing of toilets.
The new system adds another green star to the parks recent ECO¶STAR™ Rating. Smart hot water, dual flush toilets and AAA showers and taps have already been installed in the Park.
Source: Newcastle City Council
Lord Mayor’s message
As Newcastle develops its reputation as a tourism hub and shrugs off its industrial image, the inner city has also begun to transform itself into a thriving urban centre.
Honeysuckle, Linwood and the surrounding foreshore and beach areas have become very desirable places to live and socialise and as these continue to grow so does the need to invigorate surrounding suburbs.
Planning is underway to revitalise Wickham, one of Newcastle’s oldest suburbs. Historically, Wickham has assumed an industrial character but as the city’s economy changes it is making a transition back to a more mixed use character as more housing is developed.
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