City of Newcastle is extremely disappointed by recent incidents of theft and vandalism affecting community infrastructure across the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Incidents include the theft of charging cables from two City of Newcastle fast electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and damage caused to valued community sporting facilities at Smith Park in Hamilton North and Kentish Oval at Lambton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The thefts have temporarily taken EV chargers out of service at Cleary Street, Hamilton and No. 2 Sportsground car park in Newcastle West. Replacement cables have been ordered, and City of Newcastle is working to restore the chargers as soon as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The loss of income from the EV chargers will place further pressure on our budget at a time when staff are already undertaking a review of expenditure to enable Council\u2019s decision to reduce pool entry to $2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Smith Park, recent vandalism caused disruption to local sporting clubs and dedicated volunteers who work hard to support community sport. These individuals play a vital role in activating the facility, contributing to the wellbeing and connection of our community. Repair work is underway and is expected to be completed Tuesday afternoon with no ongoing impact to user groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kentish Oval was also vandalised earlier this month, and our team worked quickly to inspect and repair the damage resulting in no impact to scheduled sporting fixtures or training. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
City of Newcastle acknowledges the inconvenience and frustration these incidents cause for residents, volunteers and facility users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
City of Newcastle continues to investigate options to reduce the risk of future incidents across its network of community facilities. However, with more than 150 sports fields, 250 parks and a large network of public infrastructure across the local government area, it is not realistic to prevent every act of theft or vandalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, as a community we need to do all we can to discourage acts of vandalism and to ensure people respect public infrastructure such as parks and sporting fields. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The incidents involving the EV chargers have been reported to NSW Police. Several other privately-owned and council-owned EV sites have also been targeted by thieves in surrounding local government areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
City of Newcastle encourages anyone with information about these or other incidents involving community infrastructure to contact NSW Police or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City of Newcastle is extremely disappointed by recent incidents of theft and vandalism affecting community infrastructure across the city. Incidents include the theft of charging cables from two City of Newcastle fast electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and damage caused to valued community sporting facilities at Smith Park in Hamilton North and Kentish Oval at … Continue reading “theft and vandalism of community infrastructure”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39712,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39711\/revisions\/39712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}