The Haycock Community Center (HTCC), a popular new resource successfully developed in the last couple of years, has been shuttered due to the pandemic, but work is continuing on readying a new banquet hall, for use by December.
Volunteer work for the HTCC materialized in great measure, fulfilling the confidence of township officials as a key element in their decision to take back the building from the Quakertown Community School District’s Haycock Elementary School, and it is continuing with the banquet hall project.
On April 6, the board of supervisors held its usual monthly meeting, but outside the closed township building, and with staff represented only by Secretary-Treasurer Chris Bauer. The board ratified an emergency declaration resolution, which Bauer explained later was done “for potential reimbursement from FEMA down the road if something came up; we don’t know of anything now, but just want to open that door before it’s closed.”
Bauer also noted that the work on finishing the banquet hall was deemed appropriate by the supervisors, within their purview of determining what any essential work was during the pandemic. That decision was buttressed by volunteer work also being generally deemed as essential.
Other building projects in the township, so long as they are past the Certificate of Occupancy stage, can also still be finished up, he said.
The all-volunteer Haycock Fire Company, obviously a vital community resource, depends on its monthly fundraising breakfasts for vital financial support. Presently, those events are held in the company’s own building up the road from the HTCC, and require cumbersome and time-consuming displacement of equipment and then putting it back.
Having the breakfasts moved to the HTCC was a key use originally envisioned for the new facility, which has developed nicely in the meantime with a wide range of activities, and with manageable annual support from the township budget.
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