Rants and Raves Conshystuff style

Rants and Raves Conshystuff Style

4/10/2023

by Brian Coll

Let me start by saying these are my opinions, feel free to agree, disagree or just scroll right past.

Rant…. please be cool when driving in our community. If Fayette Street is 25 MPH, that means the side streets are meant to be a little slower from stop sign to stop sign. This goes for everyone… When I see someone complain about speeders on Facebook, there’s always someone saying its people from out of the area.. while it could be true, I notice a lot of vehicles with local bumper stickers, our schools, our swim clubs, our neighborhood car dealerships ALL OF US. We all need to be more careful.

Rave…. our local restaurant scene. This is my opinion as someone who grew up here in the 70’s 80’s, 90’s… when the ethnic food options were the Win Wah or Golden Dragon. If you consider pizza to be ethnic then there was other choices. Right now, when I ask my wife or kids what they want for dinner on nights out we have so many choices. I run through the usual choices…. Boathouse, Pub, Guppy’s and then we start branching out to some of the ethnic choices like El Limon or Coyote Crossing, Chang Mia, Eat Greek. You can’t go wrong with any of our amazing eateries and restaurants in Conshohocken.

Rant…. our community isn’t unique when it comes to a mix of older and newer residents. This happens all over America. What I notice here, at least on Facebook, is when there is a disagreement about new buildings and the way things are trending is that someone will always point out how our property values are going up. This really gets me. You know why? Property values to life long residents only matter when they die and someone else is going to sell their house. What really matters to me, to my family is quality of life. Let’s be kind to each other. In person and on line. We all came to Conshohocken or stayed in Conshohocken for a reason. To the newer residents… it was the older residents and fore fathers if you will who helped create this amazing community. To the older residents, we’ve done a good job looking out for each other, for our borough, for our community. The newer residents see that and wanted to be here. Let’s continue to be kind to each other.

Rant…. This one has been on my mind for awhile. I’m referring to an older article on Morethanthecurve.com. This is taken from March 17th, 2016 from Morethanthecurve.com

As we reported, Conshohocken’s Borough Council was agreeable to accept a payment from the developer of the office building at West Elm and Corson Streets in lieu of the developer building a bathroom facility along the trail. The developer building the bathroom facility was one of the conditions negotiated as part of the office buildings approval. The reason for the change was due to neighboring residents objecting to the bathroom facility as an eyesore and parking concerns.

Earlier in the month, the developer offered $100,000 as the amount it would pay. This amount was based on the cost to build the bathroom facility. The Borough wanted to negotiate a higher amount. According to a report in today’s Times Herald, during last night’s Borough Council meeting, Borough Council voted to accept $102,000 as the payment amount. The new amount was based on rounding up a down-to-the-penny estimate of $101,287 to build the bathrooms.

Here’s the rant part…. our borough could have had a nice bathroom facility along the river trail. Instead, we only got some money and according to a sign around this development the tallest residential building in Conshohocken. While I appreciate our borough council listening to residents in the area as far as the bathroom is concerned, I’m sure those same residents didn’t want the tallest building in Conshohocken. I’m sure those same residents would have preferred a bathroom facility as opposed to trail users going to the bathroom all along the trail while in our community.

This is a quality-of-life decision and sadly I think the residents lost out.

Rave…. To all the teachers and school personal out there. This has been a challenging 3 years. I have seen first hand how our teachers, staff, crossing guards, bus drivers and PTO moms and dads have come together and made sure our area children have had a great school year. I will point out the awesome teachers at Conshohocken Elementary who have brought their students back into the community. I recently witnessed Principal Denise Marks and teacher Amy Campbell attend a play at the mall because a student invited them. This is an amazing school district with teachers and staff who really care. In March I saw Mr. Jackson at the Conshohocken Free Library doing Reading Across America and students who were with him earlier in the day love him so much, they went to the library on their own time to see him. He is a dedicated educator and beloved by the school community.

Thanks for reading, ranting and raving with me…. I know I have more, I would love to hear some of your rants or raves. Send them our way or in the Facebook comments. Keep it clean please…..