The Eldred Township Community Center Committee is discussing plans for a playground on the center property.

The special meeting this week was a follow-up of the presentation by Donna Deihl, the manager of the Kunkletown thrift store, and her brother Doug Borger.

They presented the supervisors with ideas for the beautification of the community center property to increase its use in the community.

“Basically the first step is to throw out ideas on what you want to include in the park. Then the second step would be to figure out what projects our guys can do that we don’t need to involve anybody outside. We don’t need engineering, we don’t need contractors, we don’t need grants money, we can just do on our own. And then the third thing is to look at the things that are going to require some engineering, and then start looking at things that are going to need to be bid,” said Ann Velopolcek, Eldred Township secretary.

Deihl asked if that meant Hanover, the township’s engineer, and asked how he is going to get paid before the grant.

Velopolcek explained that everything gets paid before you get money from the grant, the grant reimburses you.

You don’t get a checkbook that has $200,000 in it, you have to pay for everything as you go and get reimbursed.

“You are basically going to have all the answers when you submit the application. In other words, once it’s in, you can’t go back. Once it goes in, that’s the way it is. They don’t want change orders. They don’t want to see, oh, we want to scrap this, we want to put this over here. I mean, think that all through,” said Commissioners’ Chairman Gary Hoffman.

Velopolcek added that specifications are needed for everything.

“In other words, if you’re putting in a plumbing pipe, you’re going to be putting in a PVC schedule 40, pipe, blah, blah, blah, you know, like everything has to be really detailed, specified, most of the specifications for things you can find online, but if you’re having bid specs done for a project, those things will come from the engineers, but if we’re doing something ourselves that we need to look into we have things we can do.”

Deihl volunteered to write the grant.

“The hard part is really to get those logistics and look at every single aspect of it. And that’s not always easy,” she said.

The learning curve may be steep but everyone on the committee is willing and ready to learn.

It might be two years down the road before the park construction begins, but Velopolcek said with a plan it can happen.