fred8033

Fork ... Many people bring their lunches with them. Saves alot of money. I'd imagine a fair number of forks are found in pursues and brief cases all the time. I bet many jurors bring left overs with them to eat during the day. I understand knives being banned from courts, etc. Makes sense. But it's still just sad.

I'm sad. I have vivid memories of my grandfather showing me his pocket knife collection. Banks used to give them out for opening accounts. If you traveled, a good keepsake was a pocket knife. He had dozens. Mt Rushmore. DC. Texas. Duluth. Now, a new local court security screening program is boasting of all the weapons it collected in the first week. They were displayed on a table. Looked to be about 50 or 60 "weapons". Box cutters. Scissors. Nail clippers. Tweezers. Forks. And dozens of pocket knives. Most were very small key-chain size. Not a single one with a blade wider than the width of my hand. I already live in fear of my kids being expelled for leaving a pocket knife in their jacket or backpack. Now, it's a called weapon for the everyday person. Probably a bit to do with our lifestyles now. More desk jobs. More internet. Less getting outside and getting your hands dirty.

Cub camping??? Tents??? ... I'm just glad when they camp. My recommendation is bring what you have. Don't go buying a new tent for cub camping. Boy scouts would be a different answer.

Spiral bound are somewhat easier to read, but I've found the pages tear out easier with rough use. The key durability issue is getting the velcro closing book cover from the scout store. Good product and extremely useful. Without it, any scout book gets beat up pretty quick. Personally, I like the non-ring bound book because it is slightly smaller, flatter and easier to carry around.

Have a sympathetic heart. They are cub leaders and you want to motivate them to do the best possible job for the scouts. Plus they are probably relatively new to scouting. Probably never seen the legalistic beurocracy of a eagle project. Probably don't know squat about scoutnet, rechartering, journey to excellence or one of donzens and dozens scout specific concepts. They're tiger leaders and wolf leaders and .... If you want to be legalistic, apply it to the Scoutmaster award of merit and similar awards. To complain about tiger den leader knots and den leader knots and such is a bit much.

"Minimum sales" - I've never cared for approaching scouting issues from the negative side. Reward instead of penalize. Celebrate achievements instead of punishing disappointments. Instead of "minimum sales", find a reward such as dues waved after a level. Or ... Our pack has rewards. No scout accounts, but every scout who sells gets a patch. Top ten or more sellers get prizes (clearance stuff ... tents, sleeping bags, flash lights, binoculars, etc.). Also, the top sellers get to put ready whip pies in the face of the leader. Sales doubled when we annouced prizes. Doubled again when we announced the pies. Our troop simply has scout accounts. We're trying to route as much of the profit to the scout as possible. Currently 80%. Goal is 100%. No waiving dues. No prizes. No pies. Patch yes. But if you sell more, you can cover your dues with the sales just like you can cover camp outs with scout account. Just scouts paying their way. (This message has been edited by fred8033)

The only good solution I've seen is transparency. Identify one person as the treasurer, but make sure multiple people are seeing the bank statements. For our troop, we have five people with online access to review the account. Each person has their own sign-on and can see the data.

January camp out is cabin camping. Indoor eating. Outdoor activities.

Very well written policy. Interesting though as during our BALOO training we were taught that we should plan a pack fall, winter and spring camp out. Summer is for council camps. And our pack does that, we offer free fall, winter and spring camps for our cubs. The summer council camps are pricey. So it's nice to offer the alternatives. It would be intersting to understand why the limit.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

5yearscouter ... agree with your comments ... I think it's less about insurance and more about "keeping things at arms length" ... BSA promotes the concept that BSA provides a program and charter organizations own the scout units. It's a problem then because most "parents of" groups are just hollow shells only existing to run the scout unit(s) and have no organization providing oversight of the units. I shake my head though because most charter orgs don't have a clue and provide zero oversight of their units anyway.

... letter from the council... interesting. - "information regarding their duties, responsibilities and liabilities as the charter organization did not flow down to successive groups of parents" - As opposed to what? Most charter orgs don't know squat about their units except that they meet in the building. I think it's much less about knowledge and much more about the identity of the "parents of" group. If the "parents of" change as the membership changes, where is the separate sponsoring organization? - "personal liability" versus "corpoate liability" - IMHO, this is the big one. I remember the fear panic that IRS and courts would rule contract employees are really normal employees subject to back pay of benefits if they work for the company for a long time in the exact same manor as a normal employee. I could see BSA national fearing that judges / government would rule the units were fully owned by BSA national and BSA national had sole responsibility for those units. BSA wants other groups with deep pockets to have some skin in the game too. Sounds like a good decision.

Try SOAROL.com. Pluses - Integrates with troopmaster/packmaster. Automatic email lists. Automatic newsletters. Easy to post pictures, annoucements and other items. Any page can be public or private based on what you want or need. *** Calendars integate with outlook, google calendar, iphone calendars etc.) Generally a great solution. Cons - Costs $99 per year (reasonable). No printable calendar. Note that scoutlander.com wants "donations" now.

Qwaze - Drop me a private message with your email address and I will forward you the script and the result. It's not a perfect solution. And google scripts can be a bit flaky. And it's not 100% automatic. But it works and it's quick and easy once you've done it once.

Thanks for the response. We've adopted some of what your saying. - Our plan now is to hand out updated calendars three or four times a year. - We've found a way using Google scripts and Google docs to auto-generate a "printable" calendar from our official calendar. Looks pretty good too. - We're able to fit about 18 months of events on one double sided page. We've left space at the end for posting a KEY (what's a PLC, etc) and for listing events more than 18 months out (high adv, etc).

I don't think it's necessary to get legalistic. From what I've seen, people pretty much ignore the Laser Tag rule. Even those on our council shooting sports committee have contempt for the laser tag G2SS ban.

Hmmmmm.... I had not thought of that one. Paint ball with catapults. Hmmm..... Yeah laser tag is out, but this might be interesting.

PackMaster is a good solution, but I'd look for one that gives you an online presence too. The following are both good options. http://www.soarol.com https://trooptrack.com http://scouttrack.com(This message has been edited by fred8033)

Ya know ... it took CalicoPenn's comments to trigger memories of earlier learning. I still agree that only the SM should sign off on scout spirit and best at a SMC. But, scout spirit is a poor requrirment to use as scout spirit is a requirement best evaluated by the scout himself thru discussion with the SM. Also, it is too subjective.

As much as it pains me to say it, Beavah hit it right on the head. Deal with elephant in the room. The family bucks the troops program. I agree with Beavah but I'd give them one final chance. Use Beavah's process to call them on the carpet. Explain it's clear they are unhappy, etc. (See what Beavah wrote.) But also cleanly identify what the troop expects of members and if they can work within that boundary, you'll be glad to have them in the troop. BUT, don't let it become a big discussion. If there is the smallest protest, immediately let them know it's best if they join another troop, hand them a list of local troops and a copy of their son's record to bring to the other troop. As for the legalisms of the situation ... - SMC is not a pass / fail. They immediately can go to the BOR - Scout spirit requirement is the one to use. RECOMMENDATION - Communicate to the unit leaders that only the SM signs off on scout spirit. Maybe others leaders sign off on other requirements. But reserve the scout spirit requirement for the scoutmaster ... just for situations like this. Then, it's not up the board of review. A BOR makes sure requirements are complete. They are not there to sign off on incomplete requirements. RECOMMENDATION - Insulate your scoutmaster from parent headaches as much as possible. Scoutmaster deals with scouts. As CC, I try to deal with parents. I'm not always successful, but I hope I save him some headaches.

Hot button topic. In my ten years as a pack leader, I've yet to see a commissioner show up or call. We had major problems around eight years ago and I had to beg to get someone to show up and guide us.

"The first night was spent at the male leader's home with just him as chaperone of the boys and girls." This is a huge red flag in my mind. Maybe it was innocent. Maybe it was just a bad decision. BUT ... it's not good. Here's what I'm reading into this. - "at the male leader's home" ... means it was local and close to the homes of the scouts ... if the leader had problems with having enough leaders, he could have delayed the event or called a parent to come stay too or sent the scouts home and restart the event the next day. It's a red flag because he had easy choices to fix the situation. - "with just him as chaperone" ... means he invited scouts into his house without another adult. It's a red flag because most abuse happens with someone familiar to the victim. Often at their house. Scout leaders should know this and should want to avoid misperceptions. - "leader" ... means he's familiar with the emphasis on YPT. He knows a female leader is required. He knows two-deep leadership is required, especially at his own house. He should have been trained. He should know this. Heck, can he get a tour permit without having YPT? It's a red flag because it's expected that he knows BSA requirements. Either the leader is inexperienced ... or untrained ... or making bad decisions ... or not taking program expectations seriously. I would not throw around accusations, but I would protect my son. What that means is your decision. ... Hopefully, it's not as bad as you described. Hopefully, there was a 2nd adult. Hopefully, things were covered and safe. ... We had a local SM who abused scouts over a long period of time. When I think about it, I get pissed. Of course at the SM. But I get even more pissed because multiple parents in the troop kept thinking something was weird and wrong but did not do anything over a period of years. Protect your son. Protect the other youth. Pursue it.(This message has been edited by fred8033)

Glad qwazse said it. The "double dipping" is a huge debate ... that, IMHO, is just not an issue ... but ... that is best left for another thread.

I've bought way too many scout shirts over the year. My trouble is most tend to wearout over the years. For my eighteen year old son, I bought two blue cub shirts and six boy scout shirts (size changes, camp staff and jamboree requirements). My other sons have each had at least three shirts each. My seven year old scout is now on his 2nd blue cub shirt. Myself, I've now been wearing scout shirts for ten years with one size increase. Three positions. I've bought at least five shirts for myself. My wife has a scout shirt for her role too. As I have three registered positions (pack, troop, district), I use two shirs and use either my pack or troop shirt for the district. .... I'm betting I've bought at least twenty scout shirts, ten pants and twenty pairs of socks. Love the new socks.

I'm not as negative, but I understand scouting is very personal. Our local councils merged about six years ago. There was concern about service and camp closings. But, I really can't see any bad results. Has it saved money? Not a clue. But, we now have three registrars in the new council where in the past each had two. Yes, one less, but it makes life much more managable on the registrars. We still have two council offices and I've used both. Those with prevously long drives to the offices still have long drives. That hasn't changed much. But the good part is zero camps have closed. Zero scout shops have closed. Instead, we have three more camps (from the other council) available for our use. We have more special events and they are bigger. Cub camps share training and planning. I think the big benefit is that the council can afford to fully staff roles that were not big enough for a single person before. For example, we have more IT resources and they've been able to produce much more. Perhaps in the pre-computer & pre-internet days, smaller councils were easier to manage. Now though, economics of scale are just too hard to argue against.

moosetracker wrote: "The boys wiil get one person of the board to contact and let them know when a fundraiser or work date is.. " What happens if the boy forgets to call that district contact and just works with his volunteers to get the project done? .... I guess if I'm sensitive to this it's because four years ago, our district adv committee was a direct cause of scouts not earning eagle. Project approvals that took at minimum three review cycles and at minimum two months to get approved. Individual DAC members would not make a decision but had to consult with the "committee". Review cycles that continued until the proposal was thick enough. It culminated three years ago with a specific scout who had been thru six approval cycles (one per month). I read the review findings and they were busy-work type of findings. Nothing significant. During the last review cycle the DAC lost the project proposal and asked the scout to resubmit everything. It was just a runaround and nothing useful to the scout. For the last two years, our DAC has been available to review projects within one week, max two. One review cycle assuming the previous review findings are addressed. Many times the project is immediately signed off on first inspection. The goal has been to help the scout succeed and be responsive. The DAC approval cycle should not be a cause of failure ... or have significant project schedule impact.(This message has been edited by fred8033)