BUCKHANNON – The Stockert Youth & Community Center Board decided to make a new event request form by merging what they already had with the city’s official event request form.

At its most recent meeting Monday, Oct. 5, the board decided to adopt certain aspects of the city’s form, but SYCC director Debora Brockleman said she didn’t think they needed every stipulation found in the city form.

“We currently have a building use form that has all the information on it – it’s a ‘they break-it, they-buy-it’ situation – and it tells you what they have to clean up and if they want to stay longer than two hours and [what to do] if they want to bounce house, those types of things,” Brockleman said. “With COVID, I think we need to revise this and add in language about the COVID situation.”

Specifically, Brockleman did not think the center needed to require liability insurance to have an event, as the City of Buckhannon is mandating for some events.

“The event request has a lot of information in it that I don’t really feel like pertains to us because I don’t think people will want to get general liability insurance to have a party at Stockert,” Brockleman said. “I didn’t feel like that would fit, but I certainly think we could adopt some of the COVID wording. I think we could borrow some of that wording and just update our form.”

Buckhannon City Recorder Randy Sanders suggested the board make a new form from Stockert’s current building use form and take parts from the city’s form to make something tailored for SYCC’s uses.

Buckhannon Mayor Robbie Skinner agreed there are several items on the city’s form that would work for SYCC but concurred they most likely did not need to require insurance.

“I’m looking at the city event request form now, and I think a lot of what we have on here can be permanent,” Skinner said. “I know it’s not going to be exact, and I think for the purpose of SYCC, we can probably just take out the insurance requirement,” Skinner said. “I just don’t think anybody at SYCC will be having anything more than just a small, private event, and it’s not big enough to do anything else. Beyond that, I agree if we want to collect both forms, and we can work together on a merged document specific for Stockert, I think that’d be a good idea.”

Sanders asked when the SYCC might begin hosting parties again.

“After we met, I started thinking about all this,” Brockleman replied. “The governor has [a mandate that] no more than 25 can be at an indoor event and traditionally, there’s usually more 25 people at a birthday party. I hate to say this, but we may have to wait until we can have more than 25 people inside.”