For more local news and photos grab a copy of the Bay Post or Moruya Examiner.

Gerald Bussa flourished that front page at last week’s Eurobodalla Shire Council’s Works Committee meeting, saying the same headline still applied three years later.

Council is demanding Gerald and Anne Maree Bussa pay for work on Luck Street, Moruya, to provide a right turning lane at the entrance to their landscaping business. Otherwise, council proposes taking legal action to close the business down, and seek penalties.

Estimated cost of the work was given as $43,000 in 2007. The Bussas have offered to contribute $20,000, but council staff say they should pay the lot. The need for the passing lane arrangement is entirely due to the Bussas’ business, they claim.

When the case came up again on Tuesday, Mr Bussa said he had thought the site appropriate for a business that the town needed when he and his wife bought it in 2002. Before then they were told the entrance would comply with conditions.

Troubles began in July, 2005, when the Bussas applied to council for a change of use for the site that had been previously used for a motor vehicle repair business. In November they were told of council’s requirement for them to provide a passing lane on the road, and the debate has continued since then.

Mr Bussa said he had discovered several businesses in Moruya that wouldn’t comply with council’s requirements

of him. They included council’s own property.

He said road improvements adjacent to his property would benefit all users, including the council that has a depot nearby. And that made the offer by he and his wife to contribute to the cost generous.

When councillors began debating the matter, Councillor Chris Vardon asked if a decision by council in February, 2006, calling for a further report to council on cost sharing had been complied with?

Development manager Lindsay Usher said the former general manager had made a verbal report and a decision made not to share costs.

Cr Vardon then moved for a deferment pending a report on the advantages and disadvantages of a cost sharing arrangement. That report should be regarded as a matter or urgency he said, adding: “This has dragged on too long”.