PITTSFIELD – Pittsfield Councilor Deb Billings said no one dropped the ball when it came to investigating a regional community center, even though no meetings have been held or progress documented in more than six months.

Billings volunteered last year to be the council liaison and representative on the regional center committee.

“We have divided into three groups, each focusing on one specific aspect of the project,” said Billings this week. Those areas are a skateboard park, community center and swimming pool. “There was just too much happening, and we needed to create more manageable groups so we could keep people focused.”

But since the committee began working last year, a fourth project has come up – creating a recreational area at Mill Pond – and Billings said this week that possibly there needs to be a shift in focus.

“Our plan now is to bring all the stakeholders together and make a comprehensive plan,” she said. No date has been set for that meeting, said Billings.

Sebasticook Valley Hospital’s Healthy Communities Coalition is partnering with the town on the feasibility study and its representative, Carrie Limeburner, said that the group started off with a bang, but then “it had a hard time regrouping after the summer.” She said that several of the individual groups had met, but that “there are no new updates at this time.”

A community center was first proposed in 1971 and, during the 1990s, a considerable amount of research was conducted. But changes in the town’s administration thwarted any real progress.

Last year, a newly enthused group of volunteers began meeting and attempting to reconstruct the previous research. The group created a name: Tri-Community Action Team, which reflected its desire to include the communities of Burnham and Detroit in all plans.

The mission statement adopted by TriCAT emphasized that the center will provide activities and enrichment for body, spirit and mind to infants through senior citizens. The mission statement says, “A place for the communities to come together in a multigenerational setting to interact.”

Along with traditional sports programs and the dream of an indoor pool, some of the programs that TriCAT members envisioned at a regional center would include a local home for Meals for ME, Head Start programs, computer classes, family events and activities.