T2Eagle

Have you ever done this before successfully? 

When we upload from Troopmaster, we upload to Council's Internet Advancement 2.0.  A day or two later everything shows up in Scoutbook.  I didn't think you could go directly from Troopmaster to Scoutbook.

If you've done this before, and it just doesn't seem to  be working this time, I would try taking that scout out completely and see if it will upload.

If it just seems like Scoutbook is hanging up because of size, I would try a few scouts at a time.

Good luck!

I'm a COR, what the  verbiage in my previous post means in practice is that I attend the annual Council meeting.  At that meeting various proposals concerning the By Laws, Officer Appointments, council and board membership, etc. are voted on.  

The real action however happens in the monthly Executive Board meetings.  So, I attended the annual meeting at the beginning of the year, where I was briefed on the then state of the bankruptcy, LC Ad Hoc Committee, etc.  Since that time the executive board has met monthly, but I and the other CORs are not part of that meeting; so I've received no direct information about how much my LC needs to pay into the trust, or how they plan to do that.

To truly take control of the council, the CORs would need to get together at the annual meeting and force themselves or their desires onto the exec board.  This happened a decade or more ago at the Chicago area council, but I haven't heard of it at any other time or place.

Council Body

The governing body is called the “council.” Because it carries the same name as the territory it serves, it will be referred to within the text as the “council body.” The council body is made up of chartered organization representatives who represent each organization chartered to operate units. Also serving on the council body are “members at large” elected by the council body. The council meets once a year, but special meetings may be called to handle special business.

Council Executive Board

The council body, in addition to electing officers, elects the “council executive board.” From a practical standpoint, the council executive board is the governing body of the council, empowered by the council body to act in its stead. Among its responsibilities are the following: • Exercises all powers of the council body between meetings of the council. This does not include authority to change or amend the articles of incorporation.  • Approves the program and plans of incorporation. • Selects and employs a Scout executive. • Establishes a budget and raises funds adequate to achieve the objectives of Scouting.

Source:https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/mission/pdf/33071.pdf

See below for explanation of what this means in practice.

I know a kid who gets up at 5 o'clock every morning and goes to the rink to practice hockey.  Most days of the week he also goes after school or in the evening for more practices and games.  His parents are then willing to have the family, or some part of the family, travel just about every weekend to tournaments, camps, etc.

Keep in mind there is actually a team of kids, probably about 20 souls, who are doing this with him.

Insert merit badges for hockey, or swimming, or gymnastics, or spelling bee,  in terms of time commitment, and it doesn't seem that hard to get to all of them.

So the answer to how they do it is time, attention, and effort.  Is this "normal"? No, but in a great big country there's plenty of outside the norm.

9 minutes ago, SiouxRanger said:

Which raises the question why are those numbers not of record?  National's determination of the amount each council should donate is not dependent on the LC's agreement to pay it, yet they are not available..

 

My understanding is that National may have specified a number, but that isn't necessarily a take it or leave it number.  There's certainly at least some negotiation, because if one LC opts out, the rest of the LCs have to make up the number to get to the promised $600 million.  Plus, just in the vagaries of how much a camp or other property is worth there is going to be some movement before it's all settled.  

I think binding is a pretty loosely used term here.  At the end of the day, just like with BSA and the LCs, this is going to be a negotiated settlement with the insurers without many issues being actually, fully, litigated.

The legal questions are multiplicitous and varied.  With many of them having little or no direct precedent.  So litigation would look like full a trial type procedure in Bankruptcy court, followed by the loser appealing and another trial in Federal District Court, followed by the loser appealing in Federal Circuit Court.  That's a decade plus of thousand dollar an hour attorneys.

The insurance companies almost certainly have a better sense than anyone else of what their probability adjusted exposure is,  calculating risk is literally their reason for existing.  They have a number they're probably willing to pay that reflects that, and it is almost certainly not the high numbers that some have bandied about.

I suspect the Hartford settlement is pretty close to the scope of what the rest of the settlements are going to look like.  I think the victims' attorneys would be doing their clients a better service if they were downplaying how much bigger the next round of recovery is going to be. 

I had a similar challenge with one of my scouts having an outside the box challenge.  I would ask the Advancement Chair exactly what criteria he thinks it doesn't meet, and then see if the scout an come up with something. 

In my scout's case it was showing that the benefit was "lasting".   So he arranged with another organization, not the primary beneficiary, to be able to do some recruiting to find volunteers (and donations) for a local soup kitchen.  Your scout might find a similar organization that could maybe use some tech friendly young people as volunteers.

I know one of the first answers some others are going to give is this is his project and it's for him to challenge the Chair.  But that's not realistic, and part of advocating for yourself and learning how to navigate the larger world is learning how and when you need to enlist allies for yourself.  

Feel free to help the scout overcome this.  Enthusiasm should be rewarded.

Or, yeah, he could build another bench.

13 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Here's PA's list of categories of mandatory reporters https://www.compass.state.pa.us/CWIS/Public/ReferralsLearnMore . I think WV's is similar.

Does #7 "An individual paid or unpaid, who, on the basis of the individual’s role as an integral part of a regularly scheduled program, activity or service, is a person responsible for the child’s welfare or has direct contact with children" mean scout leaders?

.

2 hours ago, yknot said:

In my state everyone is a mandatory reporter and the requirement is that the abuse be reported immediately to an identified state agency and possibly 911.  I think that's pretty clear. Again, I'm not clear why there is this degree of pushback on immediate reporting. Who is it protecting? Your scenario of 9 p.m. vs. 1 p.m. is fictional. You or I have no idea how the reporting process would work once it veers outside of what is legislated or inferred or seems responsible. I don't care what my position or role in an organization is, if I see child sexual abuse occurring, hear it occurring, or suspect it is occurring I am immediately calling legal authorities, not legal counsel. It is discussions like this one that make me question whether scouting should continue. If the focus isn't on protecting kids, then ... 

 

I'm curious, what state that is.  It seems hard to force anyone to report a crime if that person isn't also dependent on the state for some sort of licensing, professional protection, etc.   No other crime is subject to that, up to and including murder.

In my state clergy are not mandatory reporters.

54 minutes ago, Muttsy said:

veil piercing or alter ego, take your pick. 

The LC Charter agreement with was conditioned in part on the LC incorporating in its home state. It also provides that National can dissolve an LC for any reason or no reason. Given this level of control by national, isn't the LC's corporate separateness illusory?

That's not at all what the Charter Agreements say.  The model, but not universal, language which talks about LC assets reverting to BSA in the event of a loss of Charter has been quoted here many times. 

LCs are non-profit corporations, incorporated in and governed by the laws of their individual states.  BSA cannot dissolve those corporations, they're not owned by BSA.  And the Charter agreement, essentially a contract between two corporations, does not specify that BSA can renew or withhold a charter simply at its own discretion, it's silent about that issue.  What the limits of the contractual nature of the charter agreement are has never been litigated, and it could be different in each state depending on that state's laws governing both contracts and non-profits. 

The separation is not illusory, the extent of the separateness is at best not yet determined, but it is substantial.  

I'm part of a successful troop and pack, in a pretty successful district in a pretty successful council.  I've only ever known two unit level commissioners in my life, one was also a member of our troop, one was a friend wh had like 5 different COs he was commissioner for.  They're nice ideas, but I've never really seen them.

Something I still don't understand is how a TCC plan would handle the LCs.  What incentive would it provide that would lead them to contribute substantially more than is now being proposed?

40 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Sorry. My brain is racing as I continue waiting for access to the hearing. Now pushed to 11:15 ET.

I think it's essentially that. "We (Century) gave you all this 'evidence' of problems and you did nothing. You must want them to remain for a reason or you would've supported us, right?!"

There is, I think, an abnormal amount of this type of accusation in this case, and it has its counterparts in this forum.  Any party that is not acting the way another party wants them to act can only have nefarious reasons for doing so.  

My bet is still on a settlement rather than extensive litigation because how all the different questions in a full blown trial/trials will be answered is not at all clear, and no one wants to roll the dice that blindly.  But the constant questioning of the veracity of all sides makes the smart outcome less likely than the stupid outcome because of the emotions.

On 5/14/2021 at 2:31 AM, UKScouterInCA said:

Rather than rain pants consider a rain kilt (or rain skirt depending on what you want to call it). Super quick to put on, no issue with boots.

Of course despite being British and very familiar with weeklong horizontal rain I now live in SoCal where it last rained seriously in like 1987, so don’t trust anything I say.

A friend did Philmont using a rain kilt.  he still swears by it.  None of the other folks on the trek were convinced.

We strongly recommend that new scouts/parents invest in a really good rain jacket --- Gore-Tex level, and to the extent cost is a concern we'd rather they first  invest in that and we'll find all the other equipment they need.  We recommend good pants if they can afford them.  We have loaners of pants for trips where we know either by forecast or activity that they're going to need them.

Nothing puts a new scout off camping like being cold and miserable on their first or second outing.  For our "Tenderfoot Weekend" which is the first that new crossovers participate in, we the leaders bring lots of extra jackets, hats, gloves, etc.  to make sure that no one has a bad time for lack of proper gear.   Usually one outing where their gear fails is enough to convince scout and parent to make the investment.

4 hours ago, ThenNow said:

For those who are keenly aware, even pretty much aware, of the state of your LC's assets, how does/will this feel if the AHC is saying the "bulk" of the assets are legally restricted and you know that not to be the case for your LC? Admittedly, their language is intentionally very squishy -- "all (or almost all") and "many," so I guess they can wiggle it however they want. Convenient. I just want to see the BRG dashboards next to the internal financial statements for the LCs implicated in my claim. I've previously brought up the point of the actual constituency of the AHC and still wonder whose voice they truly are. I guess they represent "all (or almost all") or maybe just "many" of the LCs?

So, one of the things alluded to in the Ad Hoc statement that is not widely known, is that not all by-laws and charter agreements are alike:  "any such contractual interest – and the defenses thereto – also varies with the terms of the myriad organizational documents of individual Local Councils, as well as with the particular laws of jurisdictions throughout the United States."

My council's agreement and by-laws don't use the widely quoted model language.  When national first introduced that reversionary provision, they and a collection of other councils, balked, and negotiated changes from the model. Our assets don't simply revert to national in the event of charter non-renewla/revokation, rather they must be used for the purposes of scouting in our area.  So on top of whatever "normal" restrictions there might be based on donor restriction, core purpose, etc. , it's also pretty certain that our assets are "restricted" from being grabbed by national to be put into a pool for paying national's creditors and claimants.

The BRG view of what constitutes my council's unrestricted assets is almost certainly different than what my council would say is their unrestricted assets.  Both parties are making their statements in good faith, but they are using very divergent assumptions to arrive at them.

The challenge I see with TCC or any other claimants submitting a plan is that while it may be look good to the claimants, if your postings are any indication of TCC thinking the plan will get nowhere with the non jeopardized LCs.  The sample council you posted proposed the council paying in 75% of its assets.  That might look good to a council in NY or CA, but I don't think my council, or a council in TX is going to go along with that.  I remain very skeptical that the LC property can that easily be expropriated.  At a minimum that's a years long slog of litigation before it happens.

As I type this, it also occurs to me that if the LCs are not part of the final resolution what does that do to the claimant pool?  A claimant from a non look back state doesn't really have a legally cognizable claim against BSA, would they even retain their right to vote on a plan that is BSA national only?

2 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

I agree with 90%. BSA is here to get BSA out bankruptcy (Toggle Plan). Trying to get fancy and get the COs and LCs and Insurance covered as well is just not possible.

Timelime is "easy": briefs can be done in 2 months if fast, 3 if slow (BSA in support of its positions, TCC and others in opposition, BSA in reply, then oral argument.

Then, BSA doesn't need to submit a plan as much as it simply amend the existing "Toggle Plan" to put in specific numbers (Philmont, valued at XX) and let it go to the abuse victims for a vote.

34 minutes ago, yknot said:

This is complicated by the fact that while on paper BSA assigns responsibility to COs, in practice it does not ensure those responsibilities are being carried out. Every council is different, so there may be some where COs were more conscientiously  supervised and had their charters pulled for lack of unit supervision, but that would never happen in my area because it would result in lost units and membership. BSA in my experience does not care if the CO has any role in the operations of the unit. It knowingly abdicates this oversight responsibility. 

I don't think anybody does any more supervising than BSA COs do, and I don't think COs ahve any extra special responsibility that is different in kind from all the other youth serving programs.

I've coached rec league baseball and hockey.  My qualifications to do so were that when i signed my kid up they asked if anyone wanted to help coach and i raised my hand.  I filled out an application just like BSA's, I said OK to a background check just like BSA's, and I sat through an hour of training just like BSA's.  

No one conducted an in depth interview about how I handle kids or what experience I have.  No one came to watch my practices to make sure I was doing everything the way they suggested in training.  And if I wanted to I could have been a coach in the "travel" team, and I would have supervised kids overnight out of town, just like scouting.

The local recreation board certainly knows that they're responsible for bad things that happen to kids in their programs; they know they're responsible for vetting, and supervision, etc..  Anybody who hasn't been living on a mountain top without outside communication for the last 20 years knows they're responsible for whatever happens within a youth organization they're sponsoring.

There's no other better model out there that's doing anything all that different from BSA and their COs unless you get to the level of paid professionalism that comes with high school sports and really high end, paid coaching travel sports leagues.

I'm not sure that the structure for Units with respect to COs is all that different from similar programs that rely on volunteers for the program to run.

I'm part of a troop and pack chartered by a Catholic parish. The pastor always knew who the unit leaders and/or committee chairs were.   But he only knew them as well as he knew the other volunteer program heads.  He certainly knows who the Athletic Director is, but he doesn't necessarily know and certainly doesn't select all the various and sundry coaches, or at least to the extent he does he knows them, it's as parishioners not because they're coaches.  The same would hold true for the Girl Scouts, Girls On the Move, and various other youth groups.

For all these groups there's someone that's the head and then the organizations are essentially self selecting and self sustaining.  The same is going to hold true outside the parish setting in the wider community.  There's a volunteer in charge of all the local rec league sports, who came up through the coaching ranks, who accepts almost whatever parent volunteer wants to coach.  The same is going to hold true for 4H, FFA, etc

Without arguing whether these are good or bad models, my point is that the scouting model isn't particularly different nor would it be expected to have any worse outcomes than all these other organizations.  Unless you're actually hiring someone into a paid position where you're going to be interviewing, vetting, performance reviewing, etc., you're probably relying on the self selection of the volunteers and the self policing of most of the behavior.

I think it's a very open question whether the charter provision really means what the claimants would like it to mean, or can be used the way the claimants would like it to be used.

This provision has only been in the charter agreements for a couple of years, so first and foremost no one has ever tested it in any kind of court to find out what it means.  I'm not sure that either side, certainly not the LCs, understood this to mean that, contrary to 100+ years of practice, they were effectively giving National the ability to claim their assets as its own on a whim.  Are there people at national who will testify that that's what even they intended when they added this provision?  A simple deposition that no that's not supposed to mean anything like that could torpedo the whole theory.

There are all sorts of issues here, I can think of a few but I'm sure there are more.

For this provision to grab LC assets BSA has to affirmatively revoke all the charters in the country.  Why would they ever do that?  Could even a court order them to do it?  What would that even mean?  Would that end the membership of every scout and scouter, what about the COs, I believe they're Chartered to the local council.  If the local council no longer has a charter do the COs?

What would be the response if they tried this?  I'm sure at the very hint of it my council would run to state court for injunctive relief barring them from a) even revoking the charter without cause, and b) barring them from grabbing the assets even if the charter is revoked.  I'll admit I don't know how far the bankruptcy court's jurisdiction might go, but if this stays in state court, or really courts --- 40 some of them, that's probably a pretty friendly venue for the local councils.  And regarding attorney fees, you might need or want high priced specialists for federal bankruptcy court, but practicing contract and property law in the state is what probably a quarter of the local Executive Board does for fun and profit.  They'd likely work pro bono, and the litigation costs for the council would be effectively zero.   Last I checked, the minimum  time from filing to a civil trial locally is greater than four years, six isn't unheard of.  And even if you get the cases removed to federal court the many and varied state laws would still govern the decisions.  The litigation would still take years, and you could easily get different rulings for different councils.

It's important to remember whenever referring to the LCs that there at least two different classes of them, those who face current lawsuits and those who don't.  And for those who don't there are many more choices available to them than simply being told here's what you're going to pay or else.

I started a new thread about LCs.  I'm going to move some posts over.  If your post disappeared that's where it went.

13 hours ago, MYCVAStory said:

At 3:00PM EST yesterday all LCs had the opportunity to sit in on a two-hour presentation by the TCC professionals and its Financial consultants BRG discussing in great detail its analysis of all Council finances.  The TCC is providing Councils with their individual analyses.

Of note, this was NOT a part of the mediation schedule subject to confidentiality so this can be shared.  And, read into this what you want but the TCC stated that it asked that the Q&A feature be turned on by the BSA so the TCC could take questions and interact with the LCs .  The BSA was hosting the meeting and it refused. 

I don't think I understand what this is about.  What would be the value added by TCC or BRG?  What would they be telling councils that councils don't already know?

Assuming a median level of competence, each council knows what its assets are worth.  I suppose maybe a different metric on the real estate value of a camp might produce a significantly different valuation, but that seems like it would be an outlier.  My council has a few decent size endowment funds, their value can be known to the penny at any given time.  We also own two camps; any competent real estate appraiser is going to give you a valuation on them that's going to be no more than 5-10% different any from any other appraiser. 

So what was the purpose of this?

Interesting, summer may be our busiest time.  In normal times we have summer camp;  a longer more adventurous campout, usually 4 days canoeing, backpacking, type; high adventure crews about every other year; and two weekend trips to some rural properties that friends of the troop let us camp at every year.

We certainly have families on vacation, but since there's a window of no extra-curriculars from end of school until band/sports camps start up right before schools are back in, meeting attendance remains about the same.  We're not a big troop, about 30 scouts on the books.  Outside of summer camp we expect about a dozen or so scouts on all the other trips.  It always seems like meetings are more fun, except for getting ready for specific campouts we generally just head outside for games rather than try more formal programs.

Provisional patrols, or their alternatives, are always a challenge, and worthy of their own thread.

First, a unit that takes summers off has, IMHO, bigger problems than worrying about whether to count or not count that time towards a POR.

More to the point, the unit, which means the PLC and the adults assisting them, should be  able to set creative expectations for any POR that can reasonably be met even if Covid is disrupting their schedules and plans.

In just about every case where I've seen problems with POR expectations, and disagreements about whether a scout was fulfilling theirs, it was usually the unit that hadn't bothered to properly lay the foundation for success.  Four , five, or worse six months into it somebody realizes hey, we never actually told Johnny he wasn't doing things right, or worse, we never told or helped him understand what to do at all.  

You know, leaders need things to occupy themselves all week too.  Any mention of having an adult session?

There are no bears where I live, and I don't think there are any in Ames Iowa --- or in most of the more populated areas of the country.

I have feeders out and filled all year round.  I do know to periodically clean them with detergent and water.