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Community Corner

Civic Association Celebrates 100 Years

After a century of service, the Haddonfield Civic Association celebrates its works both great and small with a public dinner and its annual community awards ceremony.

Poring over 100 years of history in preparing his remarks for the 2011 Haddonfield Civic Association dinner, association president Bill Tourtellotte says he was interested to discover that, philosophically at least, the group hasn’t changed much.

“What I’ve found as I’ve done the retrospective and dug through the records is that in terms of a group such as this, the need for people to stay informed and make a difference in their community is really the same as it was 100 years ago,” Tourtellotte says.

The Haddonfield Civic Association celebrates its centenary Thursday with a dinner at Tavistock Country Club. The evening is open to the public for $40 a seat. Tourtellotte hopes that a taste of the organization’s achievements through the years will add additional volunteers to the grassroots group’s membership rolls.

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“The interesting thing about the Civic Association is that it’s not a singular-issue group,” Tourtellotte says. “Its most burning issue is to make sure that folks know what’s going on in town. We encourage people to have the tools to know what’s happening in the community so they can make informed decisions.

The association was initially established to lend a voice to various community issues overlooked by municipal governance, or that local government had no established mechanism for addressing. Some of their accomplishments are charmingly antique, such as appropriations for a town post office and public lighting. Others were born out of necessity: When the association's health committee reported on births, deaths, and communicable diseases during the 1920s, it was in the absence of an established board of health.

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Other initiatives, such as zoning issues and public land use, have had long-lasting impact. The group's conservation committee preserved from development the wooded areas that surround the borough years ago. The civic association is also the reason that Haddonfield is the only town along the PATCO speedline through which the light-rail runs underground.

“They were either spearheading these things or helping people to be empowered to spearhead these things,” Tourtellotte says. “They do so many things in front of you that it’s almost funny that no one knows.”

Although the group’s works have evolved with the times, they remain centered on facilitating informed public discourse. Today, its base of volunteers and student interns video record town forums and municipal government meetings, which are then hosted on the association's website for public benefit.

During events like the 2009 budget crisis, forums on the Bancroft land use question, traffic to the association's website spikes. Tourtellotte himself accessed HCA coverage of the 2009 municipal candidate forum when he was out of town on business.

“You need groups that sort of help out in this way,” he says. “One thing that’s really great about Haddonfield is that there’s a lot of awesome volunteer groups that do a lot for the town. People are engaged at a very high level and that give-back makes the difference.”

The Haddonfield Civic Association (HCA) celebrates its centenary Thursday, April 28 at Tavistock Country Club. Cocktails at 6 p.m. will be followed by a four-course dinner at 7.  Admission is $40, with seats available as late as the day of the event.

Thursday’s featured speaker will be Haddonfield resident and former Camden County Prosecutor Lee Solomon, president of the New Jersey Public Utilities Board, who will be on-hand to help honor 2011 recipients of the Haddonfield Civic Association Awards.

To reserve your space, visit haddonfieldcivic.com or call Greg Horton at 856-795-4045.

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