I note with concern the multiple inaccuracies about our storage business from Graham Mathews in his letter to the editor, printed in the last edition.
Firstly, Mathews is not a ‘long suffering neighbour’ and he doesn’t ‘live next to Alan’ but instead is an occasional weekend visitor in the short street of seven houses.
We have never been a ‘StorMan Franchised mini-storage operation’. Our storage units have not been purchased from any franchise, or other storage business – so his rant about some other business and their impact on their environment has no relevance in this issue at all.
In respect to the claim of excessive legal costs; Byron Council has reported the cost of the court to ratify our agreement was nil. How does that now become an enormous expense? Mathews’ imagination seems to have run wild in his personal pursuit of me.
Besides all the rhetoric it seems his concern is increased traffic to the street. So let’s explore that.
We have recorded the traffic to the storage business – as requested by council. Over a 14-day period there were eight vehicles movements – that’s less than one a day. That is not a serious traffic impact. Especially when the RTA Guide to Traffic Developments (Sec 3.2) for dwellings (and permissible on the storage site) without public transport access is nine vehicle movements per day.
Storage is one of the greenest and least impacting businesses we could have on the farm.
If it’s so bad living next to me – why have two other neighbours written letters to the editor of this paper – saying exactly the opposite?
It is incredible to see such persistent hostility from 3-4 neighbours, and the amount of airtime this issue gets in this paper. It’s just storage units. Perhaps Mathews would be much less confused if he concerned himself less with the council processes and more with the impacting traffic, or is it not impacting enough?
Alan Hunter, Myocum
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
