Light rail, Supercars, the high-rise apartment boom, Bathers Way and the CBD's ongoing shift to Newcastle West have all happened on the watch of the 13 councillors elected four years ago.

The organisation itself has changed its name and its address in that time, decamping the stately City Hall and quirky Roundhouse for a new, rented office building in Stewart Avenue.

Arm in arm with the conservative state government, the Labor-led City of Newcastle has helped pave the way for a seismic shift towards big-dollar residential and commercial investment, high-profile events and an increasingly significant Newcastle Airport precinct.

Parts of the city are unrecognisable compared with five years ago.

As it has changed, the city has become more attractive to people fleeing Sydney's congestion and crippling house prices, and it has been losing fewer young people to the bright lights of the big capital cities.

Lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes and City of Newcastle chief executive officer Jeremy Bath, who was appointed just after the 2017 election, are widely perceived to have worked in tandem to pull the council and the city in a new direction.

An absolute majority in the council chamber and a budget swollen by several years of above-average rate rises have given Cr Nelmes the firepower for infrastructure projects like the popular coastal path, a series of suburban main street upgrades and the multimillion-dollar expansion of Summerhill tip with its five-megawatt solar farm.

The city has attracted international rugby, netball and football matches, hosted an autonomous vehicle trial, opened international air routes to New Zealand and attempted to launch a bold new cultural festival.

Cr Nelmes' often-cited vision is for Newcastle to become a "sustainable and liveable global city".

At times it has been a bumpy ride.

The council's support for the city's Supercars race has led to conflict with some residents and businesses.

The impact of the race prompted retired academic Christine Everingham and former Greens councillor Therese Doyle to write a book, Wrong Track, about the secretive machinations which led to Newcastle's involvement in the event.

Newcastle East Residents Group has also fought a campaign under freedom-of-information laws to force the council to reveal details of the Supercars deal.

The next council will decide in April whether to agree to extend the race for another five years.

Others to have fallen foul of the city regime include the Newcastle Now and Hamilton Chamber of Commerce business groups, both of which were banned from applying for funds under the city's business rate levy scheme over alleged breaches of their funding agreements with the council.

Mr Bath also sacked two staff members responsible for overseeing the program.

As often appears to be the case, the saga involved a number of political players.

Hamilton Chamber president Nathan Errington ran for council in 2017 on a Newcastle Independents ticket led by Kath Elliott, who has become one of Labor's sharpest critics during this term.

The Newcastle Now board included members of the Newcastle Alliance, a business advocacy group which mounted a political campaign against Labor MP Jodi McKay in the 2011 state election.

Newcastle Maritime Museum, led by former independent councillor Bob Cook, has also crossed swords with the council over the museum collection's future.

University of Newcastle political sociologist Professor Roberta Ryan said issues such as Supercars and the council office move could influence the outcome of next weekend's elections.

"The electoral margin you need to win is not huge, if you have a rump of people opposed to an issue," she said.

The friction between the council and some of its constituents has also played out inside the chamber, where the four-member Newcastle Independents alliance, led chiefly by Cr Elliott and lord mayoral candidate John Church, have questioned much of the Labor agenda.

They have argued the council's shift to Newcastle West, including the $17 million fit-out of the new building, has been too expensive and saddled the city with a multimillion-dollar rental liability for at least 15 years.

They have supported the Supercars race but questioned its impact, culminating in Cr Church adopting a pre-election position that the event should be moved to a purpose-built track.

They accuse Labor of squandering the many millions of dollars gained by the 2015 special rate variation (estimated in 2015 at $283 million over a decade) on "vanity projects" instead of repairing and renewing infrastructure such as inland pools and sports facilities.

They have also questioned the council's claim of "open and transparent governance", accusing it of hiding information about Supercars, the office move and whether the council has used the rate rises to adequately address its infrastructure renewal backlog.

At stake on December 4 is the Labor majority. Cr Church concedes he faces a tough challenge to unseat Cr Nelmes as lord mayor, but ending Labor's control over council voting is the main game for the former NBN newsreader and his political allies.

Professor Ryan predicted incumbency would help Cr Nelmes and Labor.

"Most councils the mayor is the spokesperson for the council. That really advantages incumbency, because they control the airwaves," she said. "The currency of all local politics is visibility and naming and branding.

"You look at the City of Sydney and that's been the Clover Moore thing. She has a strong group of other folks, but it's Clover's Sydney."

Labor holds six of the 12 ward seats in Newcastle and the lord mayor's chair. It hopes to retain its two councillors in both wards three and four.

Its two ward-four incumbents, Matt Byrne and Jason Dunn, have left the council and deputy lord mayor Declan Clausen has switched from ward three to ward one, displacing Cr Emma White at the top of the party ticket.

Cr Nelmes will contest ward three in the hope of attracting enough votes to retain Labor's two ward councillors. If she wins the mayoral vote and a ward spot, she will vacate the ward for a Labor candidate lower down the ticket.

The 2017 election was a virtual wipe-out for the Liberals. Labor increased its representation from four to seven while the Liberals dropped from one councillor in each ward to just Brad Luke, who is not contesting next weekend's vote.

In their stead emerged an "opposition" of four Newcastle Independents, two of whom, Cr Elliott and Cr Church, have campaigned for the Liberals in the past.

This time around the Liberals' ticket-topping candidates have split into two camps, youngsters Blake Keating and Callum Pull in one corner and mayoral candidate Jenny Barrie with Katrina Wark in the other.

Newcastle Independents councillor Andrea Rufo is stepping down, and Allan Robinson faces an uphill battle to retain his ward-four seat after parting ways with the alliance over his well publicised sexist and homophobic language in and out of the chamber.

The loss of at least five members, Rufo, Luke, White, Dunn and Byrne, will give the chamber a new look when the council reconvenes next year. The council also could have a rare female majority, given 11 of the 13 Labor candidates and many of the Liberal and Greens challengers are women.

In the battles for the three councillor positions in each ward, ward one appears to be a tight four-way contest between the Greens' Cr John Mackenzie, Cr Church, Cr Clausen and Mr Keating.

Labor's Carol Duncan, the Greens' Charlotte McCabe, Ms Barrie and the Newcastle Independents' PJ Fallon will contest ward two.

Labor hopes Cr Nelmes' presence will get Cr Peta Winney-Baartz and Margaret Wood across the line in ward three, where their main opposition will come from Ms Wark, ex-detective Dave Wild (Newcastle Independents), community newspaper operator Mark Brooker (independent) and the Greens' Sinead Francis-Coan.

Cr Robinson is ungrouped in ward four, where he will face Cr Elliott, local businessman Wayne Rogers (independent), Mr Pull, the Greens' Tom Levick and an all-female Labor ticket of Deahnna Richardson, Elizabeth Morris and Ann Crump.

Pre-poll voting has started.

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