T2Eagle

On 4/1/2022 at 10:09 AM, InquisitiveScouter said:

Ok, so, for kicks I ran through the last five IRS Form 990's available for our council (from the IRS website)  (latest posted is 2019), Schedule G, Part II, Fundraising Events.

Net Income?

2019:  -$10,617 (5 total events...golf outings, skeet shoots, etc.)

2018: -$7,550 (7 total events)

2017: -$6,261 (7 total events)

2016: -$68,351 (8 total events)

2015:  $41,735 (7 total events, and hey!  In the black)

So, for those five years, the net income for 34 events was -$51,044

Does this mean the other revenues in our council have gone to subsidize these?

Or, is there some accounting nuance I might be missing here?

 

Our LCs form show a breakdown of Revenue and Expenses on that schedule, does yours not?  

1 hour ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Second parent confirms same story from their Scout this morning...and that there were several Scouts who knew they shouldn't be out, but the adults told them to stay.  

grrrrrrr

When you say stay out, was this middle of the night when everyone would have to get out of tents, or is this during normal hours when it really is just a matter of running through the rain to the nearby building?  Where actually were they?  Hopefully not just standing out in the rain.  

I follow the rules in scouts because they're the rules.  I have to admit I don't get very excited about them if I'm on my own.  

I certainly don't do foolish things: I'll get off the water if I'm in a boat; I'm not hugging tall trees in an open field, but if in my own tent I wouldn't get up and go seek shelter in the middle of the night if my tent is holding up.

Lightning kills 20 people a year in the US, and injures a few hundred more.  In a population of 350 million those are really miniscule numbers.  Many other things I do on a regular basis are far more dangerous.

I was looking for a camp near Niagara Falls and came across this camp --- and the bad news about it.  Doesn't look like we had it on our list yet.

Does anyone know any details about whether Camp Stonehaven will still be operating this summer, or about any other good camping near the falls?

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/boy-scouts-to-sell-camps-in-niagara-wyoming-counties-to-settle-sex-abuse-claims/article_b39d76f6-3767-11ec-91ea-9bed725c0a09.html

1 hour ago, FormerCubmaster said:

For what it’s worth, when I was a cubmaster in an LDS congregation (and when I previously worked with 11 year olds in a different LDS congregation) (and when I grew up as a scout in yet another LDS congregation), church membership wasn’t a prerequisite for troop or pack membership.  Non-LDS kids generally weren’t interested in our units precisely because of our religious affiliation; but the one or two who *did* show interest and didn’t mind being seen in the company of a bunch of Mormons were welcomed.  We saw it as an outreach/fellowshipping opportunity.  I suppose if a particular non-LDS kid were engaging in particularly disruptive behavior, then at some point we may have had to pull the plug; but I never saw anything like that happen.

So FWIW—even as a Mormon myself, I have no idea why one would want to limit troop membership to adherents to the denomination of the chartering organization.  I’m a bit of a libertarian at heart, so I prefer to see the COs given the option—but I can’t imagine why they’d want to take it.

When the LDS pulled out we ended up with a transfer from the local LDS troop.  His best friend/next door neighbor was LDS so he had been with them since Cubs.  They were terrific about his transfer, they had always paid his registration and even paid for his first year with us.

7 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

I'll eat my words. From the "Rules and Regulations, 2020 edition, page 12"l...

Young people of all religious backgrounds are welcome in Scouting, with some participating in units for youths of a particular religion and the greater majority participating in units open to members of various religious backgrounds.

For the record, my unit doesn't do this, and I can't really reconcile a healthy scout troop and such a policy.

4 minutes ago, mrjohns2 said:

You are twisting it. It says that you cannot make them be a member of the faith of the CO. If you want to twist it to the opposite, that is up to you, but the wording of the bylaws clearly says that it cannot require that.

Why else would they have that wording? For those that fall away from the church? Well, if they do, they cannot be forced to stay in.

It's not twisting it, it's a question of the order of things.  No unit is required to accept into their unit, or to allow to continue in their unit, any particular scout.  So, if I have a scout that simply will not follow the rules of the troop I can end their membership in the troop, that doesn't mean they aren't scouts, but I don't have allow them in my unit.  Similarly, a unit can require as a precondition of membership, that a scout be a certain faith or member of the CO.  The rule you cite concerns scouts who have been allowed membership in the unit, assuming the unit allows members from outside their CO.  If I let non Catholics in my unit I cannot then require that they participate in Church services, but I can, before allowing them in the unit require that they are enrolled in my parish school.

My experience has predominantly been with Catholic COs, like my current one.  Although my youth scouting involved a mix of COs: Knights of Columbus for Cubs, Presbyterian sponsored troop for Boy Scouts.  There should be no question as to where the governance of the troop lies: the troop, and pack, are a subunit of the parish, they exist first and foremost to in some way help express the mission of the parish.  Because the parish is responsible for everything that happens in the troop, good and bad, they must have an active role in what the troop is doing.  The Aims and Methods of scouting aren't hard to understand, if the CO and the people running the CO don't understand how scouting works that's a failure of the scouters involved to help educate while at the same time understanding their own role as subservient to the CO's governance.

The question of how scouting helps express the mission of a church is an interesting one and can vary depending on what the church wants.  For me one possible close parallel is Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) sports.  There's nothing inherently Christian or non-Christian about basketball, soccer, track, etc., and yet almost all Catholic parishes participate in CYO sports.  The way that this mission is seen as part of the over all mission of the Church comes almost entirely from ensuring that the activities are always run consistent with the values of Catholicism/Christianity.  There are some specific actions that make the connection explicit such as beginning and ending events with prayer, but it is more a form of osmosis that injects Christ into the sport based on the behavior of the participants more than any explicit actions. 

17 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

Sorry-no ugly hatred intended, just trying to imagine what a council can say that would induce a lender to lend, and what a lender will see if they look at the available data.  It appears that the SE here does not believe a loan is likely (unless the lender is "very accommodating"-whatever that means).  I don't see how a commercial lender can simply ignore lending standards and practices.

Using available cash is apparently out. so that leaves a sale of part or all of camp.

I am given to understand that the council's contribution is due by the end of April or mid-May at the latest. That is a very tight timeframe to conduct and close a sale.

There are issues of survey, easements for access.  A buyer's lender's requirements being addressed.  Obtaining a title commitment, appraisal, and such.  It takes 30 to 45 days to get a mere house sale through the system. 

So, anyone know what happens if a council does not make its payment by the due date?  Does anyone know authoritatively when the due date is?

Another issue is if we sell only part of the camp, and then our council is merged out of existence, will we be selling off the balance of the camp?  I don's see much coordination of effort here.

It looks like they're borrowing now, probably mostly based on the future sale of the camp and scout office; they say the camp will still be open for two more summers..  They're borrowing $2 million more than their required contribution so I suspect/hope that they'll be reinvesting a lot into the existing camp.

Since there isn't any actually approved plan yet, I don't think there can be any hard deadline for payment.  Assuming approval, I think payments, payments in kind, etc. will be a big part of what the trustee has to work out.  The basic deal is that you get protection if you pay, an LC that doesn't ultimately pay gets thrown back into state court to face the music.

Who would lend?  Well, almost all LCs will still have assets, so there is property to provide some security, they have revenue from camps, and most have a record of proven fundraising.  Pus, interest rates are at near historic lows still, so the lender bumps the rate to reflect the risk.  

Any 

26 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

My bet is that there are no more meetings going forward on how to respond post bankruptcy until the actual bankruptcy is finished.  I'm sure BSA is probably not happy 455+ people on the call heard their plans to merge councils and freeze pensions.

Any discussion at all about how they plan to accomplish all those mergers, as BSA has said throughout this process, and how has been pretty well established, LCs are independent non profits.  Each LC board would have to decide to dissolve itself as a corporation and agree to join whatever corporation is being set up.  That's not going to be popular with LCs that are solvent and have just gone through a lot of pain and paid a lot of money into a plan that they're told was designed to protect them.

27 minutes ago, SiouxRanger said:

(Sorry to someone so long ago who criticized me for frivolous comments, but the topic of COFFEE is an exception.)

I object to the idea that coffee is a frivolous topic, but I'll refrain from moderating you just this once.

17 minutes ago, SiouxRanger said:

NEVER make coffee for anyone.

(Oh, and why aren't the coffee lovers making their own coffee?)

 

Yeah, if you don't drink coffee don't try to make it for anyone who does, it just won't end well.

Had a fellow adult volunteer to do the shopping for the adults for a campout.  Mind you, this person was a connoisseur of beer, only drank the finest, could tell you all the differences between different types, etc.  Anyway, come Saturday morning we pull out the coffee they bought, it was the absolute cheapest, no name generic stuff on the GFS shelf, just awful.  When they were confronted, I asked them, "If I offered to buy you beer, would you expect me to buy the lowest, cheapest, yellow colored water I could find, or would you expect I'd have the sense to at least go to the middle of the shelf and get something someone had heard of before?"

To be a little helpful in case you don't take the good advice offered, one tablespoon good quality ground coffee to every eight ounces of water.

23 minutes ago, RichardB said:

@fred8033 comes closest to the pin on the reason that multiple units of different Chartered Organizations need council permission to hold events together in the name of Scouting.    The charter granted is only for unit operation, not multiples.     

So this is what drives those of us running units crazy.  A rule, that almost no one on the ground has ever seen a need for, covering a situation that many of us have experienced without bad or even near bad outcomes arising from it, is pronounced from national BSA with no explanation at all.  The reason that you give here is not a reason, it is a statement of a fact that makes no attempt to tie that fact to an explanation for the NEW rule that you've imposed. 

And here's the two pronged problem YOU CREATE by behaving that way: the first is that absent a good explanation, as you can see from speculation here, folks suspect a venal rather than a rational explanation; second and more importantly, when you create rules that seem arbitrary, make no sense to people's lived experience, and come with no satisfactory explanation you lose credibility with the folks that you need to enforce the rules, which leads to people doubting your credibility in the need to follow other much more important rules.

I'm a licensed attorney, I've been a Vice President of a Fortune 500 company, if you speak slowly and use small words I can probably follow the reasoning for this and other proscriptions --- and so can virtually all of my fellow scouters. 

5 minutes ago, PaleRider said:

I know this may sound silly to some but is what it is, who are the non debtors

The Local Councils and Chartering Organizations, who are not the debtor(s) declaring bankruptcy, but under the plan will be given the same protection from future law suits as if they had gone through bankruptcy.

16 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

Yikes.  85% seems low. 

Why does that seem low?  Given how many people we are talking about, that is literally higher than the percentage of people who would agree that the earth is round. 

Given the pain involved there has to be a substantial number of people for whom anything short of burn it all down will not be something they voluntarily agree with.  Add in the number of people who would be personally better off without any non debtor releases (more recent case, substantial evidence, a willingness to endure trial, deep pocketed solvent co-defendants, etc.),  and I don't see any way you're ever going to get much higher.   In addition, for the folks in those two camps there is no downside to voting to reject.  They won't receive less from the plan because they disagree with it.

22 minutes ago, ramanous said:

Once a parent has been through training (not just ypt), what is a reasonable way to involve these parents in the troop?

The reason I ask is that the current "senior" Scouters in the troop seem hostile towards having parents involved in the troop regardless of their experience or training. At the same time, I hear complaints about adults not wanting to step up as volunteers (which isn't true.) Most of us have scouting experience and/or training so we are aware of scouting methods and the concept of being youth-lead.

Go camping with the troop --- a lot.  Everything that's really important happens at campouts, not at meetings, not advancement, campouts!  If you're on the campouts, and I mean several in a row, you have both good knowledge about how the troop runs and whether it can run better, and you have built credibility both by having that knowledge and by being able to tie your ideas to your experiences. 

16 minutes ago, Eaglewarr7 said:

i see so many Uniform Police Here so tell me this ,l Why can Mormon scouts wear blue jeans to a eagle board? Or why can a kid just out of jail for drug selling with blue hair get eagle scout one week later Call it like it is.

What's wrong with blue hair?

1 hour ago, skeptic said:

The secrecy, as you suggest had as much to do with the society at the time as anything else.  As has been shown and discussed, libel and slander law was different back then.  

First, I don't in any way suggest that the secrecy had anything to do with the society at the time.  Quite the opposite is my point.  Child rape was a felony, pretty much for the history of our republic.  BSA's secrecy was not because of society, BSA's secrecy was to protect the organization from knowing the truth that predators could exist in what they wanted everyone to think was an organization BETTER than society as a whole.  Their secrecy was no different than tobacco companies actively covering up the link between smoking and cancer, or Enron covering up its financial misdeeds, or Purdue pharma covering up the addictive properties of oxycodone, or a myriad other organizations who cover up or covered up problems within their organizations in order to protect their reputations, even at the expense of greater harms being done.

I am an attorney, so if not an expert at least an educated opinionator.  Your description of a difference in libel and slander laws from then to today is a misunderstanding of both the laws then and changes since that time.  As you note, defamation is about FALSE statements.  Truth is an absolute defense to libel claims.  

Let me tackle the historical first, the difference in the laws then and now primarily concern public figures and the press.  The recent Sarah Palin case is an example, where the press is protected against even false statements about public figures, unless they are maliciously made.   

But libel, slander, and defamation laws would never protect an abuser, then or now.  If Johnny scout tells me "Scoutmaster Jones abused me", and I then tell someone else "johnny scout said SM Jones abused him" or even if I'm a little less careful and say "SM Jones abused Johnny scout".  SM Jones cannot successfully sue me unless he thinks he can get Johnny scout to get up on the witness stand and be asked "did SM Jones abuse you", and have Johnny scout say "no, he didn't."  Setting aside that SM Jones would probably not want to draw even more attention to the charge, he knows that in fact he did abuse Johnny scout and so he is more likely to lose than win that suit.

The men who ran scouting, then and now, were titans of society.  It's inconceivable that they were afraid of being sued.  What they were afraid of was the truth, that their organization, with all of the good that it did, also contained predators.  They pursued secrecy well beyond normal confidentiality in order to protect not children but the reputation of the organization, and by extension their own.  They deserve neither our defense nor our sympathy. let alone our admiration.

1 hour ago, skeptic said:

Stop trying to evaluate things out of context.  The entire perception of these things was different back then.  Yes, he actually was instrumental in the IV files, which was a step in the right direction based on the era.  I suspect that given today's systems and information, Mr. West might well have been pushing for major changes and protections now recognized.

Secondly, stop calling them the perversion files please.  That is not what they are called, nor are many of them remotely related to "perversion".   It is like the corruption of the ACA to the Obama Act.  It is misleading and distorts the overall picture or meaning.  

This hyperbolic exaggeration and lack of understanding how society affects things is simply foolish.  

The problem with the idea that "things were different back then" is that the understanding of CSA wasn't all that different.  It was back then considered a heinous crime, punishable by long prison sentence.  It was in fact so heinous a crime that organizations went to great lengths to ensure that nobody knew that it occurred within their organization.

It's true that one of the uses of the IVF files was to attempt to keep predators who had already been discovered from reentering scouting.  But the reason they were kept so secret, the ONLY plausible reason that they were kept so extraordinarily secret, was to protect the organization and its reputation, not the scouts themselves, but the organization.  That cowardly act, that violation of the tenth point of the scout law: to protect the organization's reputation as a pristine environment --- a reputation that it didn't deserve, as demonstrated by the number of predators in its midst --- directly led to a larger harm than would other wise have occurred. Had more people known, had they simply not worked so hard to conceal the truth, steps would have been taken both by individuals and probably even as an organization to reduce the ability of predators to use the scouts for their nefarious deeds.

What reason, other than protecting the organization, was served by not just confidentiality but by the absolutely extreme secrecy surrounding the existence of those predators within scouting's ranks?

29 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Actually its the urban areas with traffic lights that cause much of the problem because the following drivers will take risks to keep up with the lead driver when lights change between vehicles, or they quickly change lanes when traffic gets heavy. I've witnessed two near collisions in those scenarios. It's better that each driver gets the next stop on their own. That may still be only a few blocks apart, but the following driver isn't being motivated to catch up. As for the van without a 2nd driver, might consider a mature scout who can help navigate and attend with the passengers. I even did an Eagle BOR in that situation on the way to Philmont.

Barry

One of the first things I did when I became SM, now many moons ago, was end our troop's practice of caravanning.  After just a couple of trips driving as an ASM I realized it was an insane idea, and refused to do it myself.

Five vehicles in a row, the first a truck with the trailer, first two make the light, the third hurries to beat the light.  Then, all three of those pull to the side of the road to wait for the last two, meanwhile everybody coming from the perpendicular portion of the intersection has to swerve around the two stopped cars plus truck with with trailer who are on the edge of the road --- crazy.  You'll either cause the accident or be the accident.

2 hours ago, yknot said:

The Council's interest will be in having the largest financial war chest possible in order to continue paying salaries for as long as possible in the face of dwindling membership and fundraising. 

 

That's a weird assumption given that the people making the decision are volunteers who don't draw a salary.  Council board members really don't have a vested in interest in whether they have 5DEs, 2 DEs, 3DDs, 4 people working in the scout shop etc.

8 hours ago, scoutldr said:

While I hate to see any Council properties sold off, I would have questioned the propriety and legality of the plan to seek taxpayer dollars to purchase it.

I've never seen it myself, but my understanding is that several, even many, camps in the mountain west were on US Forest Service land.

1 hour ago, skeptic said:

Just my personal opinion, but the local council there is not showing good judgment.  Would rather see the land protected with a smaller profit on it, than see it developed.  From my perspective, even with all the issues currently, that should be a major consideration.  Once it is developed, other than as a park or preserve, it is gone, period.  

Agreed, we're not a for profit corporation obligated to provide the highest possible dollar return to shareholders (arguably, for-profits aren't actually obligated to do that either).  We serve the community's interests, and we're obligated to do what's best for the community; that doesn't mean we can ignore finances, but it doesn't obligate us to place finances first. 

4 hours ago, ThenNow said:

Bring on the next $130k+. 

https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/1d0f8ba2-2a17-4ee9-871d-9dd1dd4ce502_9064.pdf

Whoops! The tried to slide #18 on by me. 78 grand, give or take.

https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/969cd108-c6da-4241-9ed3-0f26b65894c9_9063.pdf

I know there are some sophisticated consultants among us. Care to translate this? Oh, wait! I think that first sentence was lifted from my job description when I was raising teenagers. I knew it looked strangely familiar.

About Ankura 
Ankura Consulting Group, LLC is an independent global expert services and advisory firm that delivers services and end-to-end solutions to help clients at critical inflection points related to change, risk, disputes, finance, performance, distress, and transformation. The Ankura team consists of more than 1,500 professionals serving 3000+ clients across 55 countries who are leaders in their respective fields and areas of expertise. Collaborative lateral thinking, hard-earned experience, expertise, and multidisciplinary capabilities drive results and Ankura is unrivaled in its ability to assist clients to Protect, Create, and Recover Value.

That there is some first class, high priced gobbledygook.

Together with the questionable judgment of selling to a member of the Exec Board, ticking off a sitting US Senator is rarely a smart move.  

At a minimum, if they were going to sell to the highest bidder than the bidding should have been open, public, and transparent.

It's also worth noting that they say the funds are going to be reinvested in the other camps; they are not claiming, at least in the current statement, that the fubds are going into the bankruptcy trust.