Graham Mathews, Byron Bay
I read, with a sense of unreality, the (print) headline to your August 3 article, ‘Councillor’s DA all good’ and, as I read down, I wondered what alternative universe the council’s staff are living in.
The reality is that, in the collective recollection of my – and Cr Alan Hunter’s – ‘long-suffering neighbours’, there has never been a time in recent years when he and his ‘road transport terminal’ have been compliant.
Quite apart from the approval for the operation which is the subject of your article and which, in any case, expires this month and for which there have been numerous, documented, breaches of the approval conditions over the two years (late-night and weekend accessing of the facility, particularly), he has been running a parallel, identical, operation on another area of his property.
This activity has been going on, for several years now, without supervision or restrictions until the pressure from neighbours on council’s compliance staff finally forced him to lodge a development application.
This reluctantly lodged DA, it is worth pointing out, was handwritten and was lodged with council unaccompanied by any of the attachments one would have expected to accompany an application of such significance (traffic management, environmental impact, social impact, etc) and appeared to be an exercise in placating the neighbours and council staff while the activity continues unabated.
This DA has now been in the system for months with little or no discernible progress.
Meanwhile the Hunters continue to operate their business on both parts of their property and it seems that as of sometime this month neither of their operations will have a valid approval in place. Nice look when you go for re-election in a month or so, Alan.
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. 
