news, local-news, stockton beach, erosion, jodi mckay, gladys berejiklian, stockton

CITY of Newcastle chief executive officer Jeremy Bath has hit back at claims from Liberal MLC Taylor Martin that the council has failed to apply for funding to fix Stockton's erosion crisis. Mr Martin, the government's de facto spokesman for the Hunter, said in Parliament this week that the council was too busy building "vanity projects" to apply for funds from the government's $83 million coastal erosion fund. "They haven't even been bothered to apply for their share of funding from the state government ... We've had that money on offer for years now," he said. He said the government had agreed to hold open the latest round of offers by two weeks to allow the council to apply. The council's Independents criticised the apparent failure to apply for money. But Mr Bath said in a letter to councillors on Thursday that the council had applied for three lots of funding under the program, for sandbagging, the demolition of Stockton's childcare centre and emergency work on the Mitchell Street seawall, before the deadline. He said the erosion program did not allow for retrospective funding of projects already completed nor applications for projects starting before January 2020, but the government had encouraged him to apply nonetheless. The urgent nature of the works meant the council could not wait until funding started flowing. His letter also said staff had "raised with me concerns regarding several [social media] posts by councillors this afternoon" and urged councillors to contact him or other senior staff before "making comments to media or on social media". He said staff were working hard "in the face of well intentioned third party interference" and "obstacles put there by people who do not reside in our LGA". RELATED READING:

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