Bloodied but unbowed! After the almost unanimous rejection of his 2016 Development Application for his mega-mini-storage complex by his fellow Byron shire councillors, the worthy Cr Alan Hunter strikes back with an appeal to the Land and Environment Court against the decision.
In a tactical master-stroke he simultaneously lodges an Application to vary the Conditions attached to the Approval for the mini-mini-storage complex which he is currently operating. The point being that the original DA had a two year ‘sunset clause’ attached to it which he now wants removed from the Consent Conditions to allow this activity to run indefinitely without the scheduled September 2017 review. confused yet?
In a saga that has been running for almost as long as that great Australian production ‘Blue Hills’, this latest two-pronged assault will, of course, now consume vast amounts of council staff time, payments to independent consultants and, in the case of the Land and Environment Court case, briefing of Council’s lawyers, all of which cost is borne, in one form or the other, by the ratepayers of the shire.
To cap it all off, we now have the absurd situation where one of our elected representatives is in an extended legal battle with the very council he is a member of, conducted by that body’s permanent staff and funded by the same people who re-elected him to office less than twelve months ago! So much for fiscal discipline and the careful management of council’s financial and human resources.
I note that, much to the chagrin of his ‘long suffering neighbours’, a steady stream of pantechnicons, cars/trailers, utilities and vans is still parading down Pinegroves Road towards the complex of sheds which the councillor has repeatedly asserted are ‘farm sheds’ and which, in fact, form the centrepiece of the DA which was rejected last year and will now be considered by the court.
This is, of course, commercial activity for which no consent is currently in place but council staff, when challenged on this subject, have advised local residents that council’s policy in these matters is not to enter into enforcement action while a Development Application
Nice work if you can get away with it, Alan.
Graham Mathews, Pinegroves Road
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