Well, last evening's Board of Commissioners in Lower Merion Township was a fragmented affair for me because I was switching between it, the Phillies (YAY! Go Phils!), and the debate (well, they really aren't debates any longer so how can they call scripted conversations debates?).

Bottom line: is everything ran late, and I kept dozing , but woke in time to see the crowd going nuts when the Phillies clinched last night's game. HOWEVER, in between, I did watch some of the Lower Merion Township Board of Commissioners meeting. I caught the bond issue thing and wonder in this economic environment is it wise to incur more debt?

I also caught some contretemps with the River Trail and issues that some on the board have with this consultant Bob Thomas. So anyway, as far as THAT goes, it goes like this:

The River trail was not on the agenda per se, yet it came up because Lindsay from Parks and Rec. had given a status report on the meeting Monday evening (which I attended and Cheryl Allison wrote about in an article titled Trail still leads to nowhere ).

What on Monday was Bob Thomas said Norfolk Southern was open to a trail in its right of way if it was above the tracks, even though I a pretty sure Norfolk Southern has said "no" to this before. So apparently the "no dice" was reiterated by Norfolk Southern after the meeting and several commissioners including Gould, Brown, and Rosenzweig were kind of hot about Bob Thomas not being objective or something like that.

So Commissioner Gould made comments about it and then Commissioner Brown concurred. Somewhere in there Commissioner Zelov either started to poo-poo them, or maybe it was he made a face, and Commissioner Rosenzweig hopped into the conversation and told Commissioner Zelov he felt that he had been lied to by Bob Thomas with the back and forth saying it wasn't possible to have this part of the trail in meetings, but then putting it WAS possible in notes (huh? Can you blame him?) in some report somewhere.

Then predictably Commissioners Manos and Rogan kind of disagreed - kind of the way this board works these days, but I digress. So this wasn't anything I saw on the agenda or seemed to have action taken on, it was like caucus or something. (And oh by the way, read the letters to the editor this week in Main Line Life about the river trail)

Ok, at that point I don't know, I was torn for a while between being a student of politics and fascination with these campaigns and peeking at the Phillies beating the stuffing out of the Dodgers.

So then the meeting goes la la la along and I switch on Channel 7 to hear Commissioner Brown starting to discuss the sewer hook up propopsed for River Road, months ago - the deal was simple: Rufo Construction who is building McCondos on the river wanted the hook ups so they offered to put it in at a low, low, low price so their River Landing benefits. River Landing, incidentally looks like more of that gross new trend of "carriage home" styled squash 'em in like bugs being proposed for both Rugby Road and also in that delusional plan for 236 North Aberdeen. But I digress (and I will get to 236 North Aberdeen).

Anyway, Commissioner Brown says that all of a sudden, Rufo says they can't build sewers for whatever they told the township they could build for and all of a sudden everything is 40% higher in costs.

FORTY percent? That's not inflation, so is that (a) bait and switch or (b) can't add all the numbers up?

FORTY percent. Wow. See, The rationale for going forward as opposed to two, five or ten years from now was that it appeared to be a once in a lifetime deal ----a private developer was going to put the sewer in and save the residents of River Road a whole boat load of money compared to what it would cost if the Township did the work itself. (of course I still don't understand why the township couldn't get some sort of grant to help with this).

In between all that some other commissioner talks about O'Neill wanting to hook up to same sewer for some project. (Is O'Neill building right now? All I hear is about the Conshohocken fire and the aftermath.)

So then someone says that if O'Neill is there, then it won't matter if Rufo drops out.

Huh?

Wouldn't the point of adding yet another developer in close proximity be to further reduce costs to River Road residents? (So why is it River Road always gets screwed somehow historically?)

Anyway, so thinking this plan was a go, the township got permits or whatever for this from the DEP and amending their own Act 537.

Ok this is where I fell alseep for a bit, and had to rely on someone else watching the meeting for the missing piece:

Commissioner Jenny Brown made a motion that LMT revoke their authorization for the Township manager Doug Cleland to enter into the agreement with the developer to install the sewer. There was much discussion and many commissioners expressed overt outrage...then the motion was altered a bit to state that the manager is authorized to negotiate with the developer, but is not authorized to enter into any agreement until the Board of Commissioners says so. It passed unanimously by vote.

Ok so now I guess they figure out how the DEP feels, what is really up with this developer. What's next? Will the developer in this economy bail on the development project? How the freak could the numbers be 40% off? This all stinks like a leaking cesspool, huh?

Ok, now let's talk about 236 North Aberdeen Avenue in Wayne for a second. The house was built by Jonathan Lengel who built much of Wayne's fabulous structures (like the Saturday Club I think). It was built by Lengel for his family.

So this house is a rental property at present which is owned by these two realtors from Rosemont's Prudential office named Sherrie Burlingham and David Buckley. (See folio 36-01-00015-00 on Delaware County's website if memory serves)

So there have been long tall tales of these developers moving from a home in a swanky St. David's neighborhood to here, and at the 11.5 hour, Sherrie had a neighbors meeting - where she listed the wrong address for the propoerty in question (like Aberdeen Terrace or something) and she held the meeting in a neighborhood where people work from between 5 and 6 p.m. - you know so if you work, and you leave at 5 p.m., it would be over by the time you rushed home? Or if you are a stay at home mom waiting for a working dad to come home, what does between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. mean for you? You got it : dinner and homework for kids.

So the long and short of that meeting was the developer saying something like if the neighbors worked with her on an alternative plan well then maybe she'd withdraw the current plan, right? SO the current plan, takes down a historic home, takes away at least 5 on street parking spaces on a tiny one way street that parks everywhere but in the trees and Gulph creek now, adds crazy amounts to impervious surface, and oh yes, wants FEMA to move a flood plain line to accomodate their plan, but which would totally disregard the people 8 to 10 feet below them across the creek on Willow Avenue. And oh yes, did I mention this lot line change or whatever it is called being proposed is using 32 year old flow rate data? 32 year old data? Sheesh, that doesn't even cover Floyd which emptied basements all over Willow Ave and other places!

So the commissioners meeting on Monday in Radnor apparently brought out the neighbors against the plan and the engineer for the developer. So the developer not only broke their word to neighbors but failed to show up? Apparently all very true and if you live in Radnor you can watch the replay.

Apparently the developer was 99% on their way to a denial, but the neighbors decided two wrongs don't make a right, and are giving the developer one last chance to show up later this month in Radnor, withdraw the BAD plan and propose a plan that would restore the old house and maybe build ONE, SMALL NEW single on one half of the lot, but to not make it a McMansion, and it would share ONE driveway cut with the old house. So this would be take the high road on the low side of the creek?

Will these developers have the brains god gave a flea? Who knows. But another good outcome is it makes Radnor as a municipality look at stormwater, flow rate, and flood plain issues...after all, government can't use a talking pen and turn a blind eye just to get new development, right? And besides, who in their right mind except a very inexperienced wannabe developer would be dumb enough to start something like this now? After all, if you don't believe the economy is tanking, look at sheriff's sales - they are up aren't they?