Parts of roads which form Newcastle's Supercars track have again been ripped up and resurfaced ahead of the motorsport series' return in March.
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The council said some of the activity was "not related to the Newcastle 500" and had been funded under its capital works budget.
This included in Watt Street where it had replaced "aged stormwater infrastructure" and raised and renewed sandstone kerb outside Customs House.
Elsewhere, four raised rubber pedestrian crossings are being removed.
The road under one in Watt Street had been "damaged by heavy vehicle movement and exacerbated by trapped debris and moisture", the council said.
"Due to the condition of the road underneath, temporary replacement of the rubber crossing was deemed unsuitable, and asphalt was laid on the crossing in place of rubber in late October."
The council said the road surface where the other crossings are being removed "would be cleaned, levelled and crossings painted". It did not say why Scott Street was resurfaced between Zaara Street and Parnell Place.
The latest works have left some locals frustrated given parts of the track have now been resurfaced multiple times in the past four years.
Scott Street was resurfaced in early 2019, along with Zaara Street, Shortland Esplanade and the road at Horseshoe Beach.
The council described the works at the time as "routine maintenance and renewal of road infrastructure". It also said it had resurfaced the eastern part of Scott Street and Parnell Place, and Watt Street between Wharf Road and Scott Street because the road was "aged asphalt".
Under its agreement with Supercars, the council must provide "regular (and at least, annual) maintenance and upgrading of all roads within the Circuit, at the direction of and as required by V8SCA", the "services deed", which was kept secret from councillors and only revealed in 2018 through freedom-of-information requests, states.
The council's annual budget for hosting the Newcastle 500 is $1.6 million annually, including in-kind works it completes.
Newcastle East Residents' Group spokesperson Christine Everingham, who wrote a book about the city hosting Supercars and has campaigned for greater transparency about the event, said it was a "ludicrous suggestion" that the in-kind costs only accounted to "$250,000".
"It's extremely costly to run these races, the roads get ripped up," she said.
"Not only that, the other thing that costs a lot of money is the sort of surface they have to put down.
"It's a different quality."
The council did not say how much the latest works were costing, only that "there is no change in the $1.6 million cost to ratepayers from hosting the Newcastle 500 in March instead of December". A recent study the council commissioned concluded for every $1 it invested in hosting Supercars, $22.60 was returned to the local economy. However, the analysis was criticised by some councillors and members of the public.
The Newcastle 500 is on March 4-6 next year.
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