Newcastle council's record budget has been given the final tick, but not without questions over productivity and infrastructure backlog spending from the city's Independent councillor.
Councillors on Tuesday voted to adopt the $424 million budget, which includes a $132 million infrastructure spend and predicted return to surplus.
More than 60 submissions were made during a recent exhibition period, with more cycleways, traffic congestion, parking, street maintenance, flooding and Stockton beach among issues raised.
The budget included $4.4 million on cycleways. Greens councillor Charlotte McCabe said she was hoping for $5 million to help connect existing paths, but was glad the amount was up on last year.
"We talk about an amount of budget that has been spent but we do need to look at the bigger picture that we have built pieces of pieces of cycleways around the city," she said. "No one would celebrate building pieces of train line that aren't connected to each other.
"So I'll be hoping next time, as we do prioritise this, that it won't be a $5 million allocation, it will be at least a $6 million allocation and that we get this job done."
Labor councillors praised staff efforts to bring a balanced budget with "big ticket items" including construction of the organic waste facility and upgrades to Newcastle Ocean Baths and the art gallery.
Liberal councillor Callum Pull said while he didn't support the one-off rate rise introduced to fund the spend, he supported the overall budget.
Independent councillor John Church was also strongly against the rate rise.
"At a time of escalating cost-of-living increases ... this could have been the year when we gave ratepayers a small break, after years and years of large rate increases, many well above inflation," he said.
Cr Church was also critical the budget didn't spend more on the infrastructure backlog.
Deputy lord mayor Declan Clausen questioned Cr Church over "what parts of the city's budget he would do away with" if the rate rise and budget were not adopted. Cr Church said it was not just about taxing and spending, but productivity improvements and efficiency gains.
"In fact, this organisation was promised that there would be productivity improvements of $14,000 per employee per year if we moved into these new premises," he said. "I'm afraid I've not seen any evidence of those productivity and efficiency gains.
"Clearly, there's a chance there for us to do some financial management, around efficiencies, productivity improvements, cost control - things I don't hear in this organisation.
"There are ways to live within your means as any household and any business would do and as a publicly funded organisation, it's so important for us to do that."
Lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes criticised Cr Church for "denigrating staff", while CEO Jeremy Bath said the productivity was reflected in low absenteeism and that he "couldn't be more proud of the staff and what they've been able to achieve".
