Newcastle City Council decided to hold the two-day workshop after the community refused to accept council’s decision in November to remove the trees from the street because of safety reasons.

Arboriculture, architecture, land-scape architecture, urban design, heritage planning, civil and traffic engineering experts and council staff will attend the workshop as well as local residents to develop altern-ative options for the street.

The workshop, March 19 and 20, is estimated to cost $70,000.

Trees in Newcastle chairman and consulting arborist Ian McKenzie said he was pleased council resolved to hold a community workshop.

“I’m happy with this outcome and that the community can now work together to come up with a range of options for the figs,” he said.

Mr McKenzie said the cost of removing the trees would far out-weigh the cost council was spending on the workshop.

“Council will need to spend a lot of money to remove and replace the trees with a different species.

“The assets of these 14 trees will add up to the millions of dollars, you have to invest in them to get the value out of them,” he said.

However, Newcastle City Counc-illor Brad Luke said it was unbeli-evable council was willing to spend $70,000 on the consultation.

“Community consultation is important but that money should be spent on fixing our roads and footpaths.

“It is an incredibly large cost, and it is not going to be a one-off cost, everyone will expect the same amount of money be spent in community consultation elsew-here,” he said.

Cr Luke said it was a complete waste of money.

“We’ve had six arborists tell us that these trees need to be removed beca-use of safety risks.

“We (council) have about $130 million of infrastructure backlog bec-ause we put ridiculous amounts of money into things like this.”

More information on the workshop will be available in the future.