Tron

OA in my area is basically a joke as described by Eagle94. I know that Jan 1st a bunch of changes went into affect and it's blowing up what was already a barely hanging on for relevance program that OA became.

I don't get the BOR thing. Scouts should lead the meetings. Adults don't have to be registered to sit on a BOR. Adults should be in the back/outside/under a rock STFU. That means if a scout needs a BOR, there shouldn't be a problem grabbing 3-6 adults and doing a 15min BOR at any moment.

I'll jump on the pity party. 64% of my town lives at or below the poverty line. $237 is not a lot of money.

I would just raise the issue as is. Hey SM, the last SM popped smoke after being accused of favoritism, etc ... what you just did screams favoritism and we need to address it before the unit gets hurt. What's the SM and CC going to do? Kick you out of a troop you're already thinking about leaving?

Some of these issues were caused by the councils and how they have things configured in AKELA. For example, one of my units hit "the naughty list" for not rechartering timely and I was confused so I spoke with the COR; the COR completed recharter the first week of December (all online). I then went to the DE and let him know that the unit rechartered online the first week of December, and was promptly notified that "whoopsie" council has an "introduced" manual process that blocks all recharters for a manual review that caused the issue. We're never going to have a smooth process if the professionals are introducing extra steps to try and keep this 1970's style. $237 isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things but what are the scouts getting back for that? The fee's are not bad if the scouts are getting value back; I just don't see the value back when visiting these high fee councils. One of the councils adjacent to mine has a $160 council fee; they have 18 more fulltime paid staff than my council and they have several hundred fewer scouts; what value is that council getting?

I don't think this was a blunder. From what I have witnessed this was a good thing. Just to be clear as to what I was seeing in my area; we had a pack charging $500 pack dues and blaming council & national. Now that it has become infinitely harder for that pack to munge all the dues together at 1 point in the year and blame recharter, council, national, santa claus, and whomever else for the steep fees that pack is down to single digit membership because all of the cubs in that area are going to other packs now. Whatever happens going forward membership cannot overlap with recharter; membership with national and council "service fees" have to be clearly defined so as to prevent bad units from scalping parents.

I was mistaken for the membership chair of my district this week. I was like, I do know the membership chair; however, I am not even on that committee. But in the persons defense we have not seen the membership chair at any district meetings or roundtables for several months :P

There is a 2 month "lapsed" period; however, depending on what report a leader looks at a lapsed scout may or may not be represented. I really hope not; but, if they do decide to go back to pro-rated I hope they have membership at a different time than recharter.

Patrol time; the bane of the main character syndrome parent.

I have heard of units (the scouts) voting to have the SPL request a leader stay on when their scouts age out. It seems more ceremonial than anything, like a vote of confidence to try and get a beloved leader to stick around.

In my neck of the woods very few of the councils seem to have all of the mandatory committees. As far as I know, at best my council's safety committee(s) [there are technically two required now] are on paper only, I have never heard of them meeting or putting out anything to the various district committees.

I see what you guys are saying, and it makes sense from a point of view that a scout might not care and wants to just chill; however, the parent told me the scout wants to go to NYLT (has wanted to go for a couple of years). I don't know of any variance that allows a scout to attend NYLT without being at least 1st Class rank. So the NYLT thing really indicates that the scout wants to get to 1st Class but isn't getting there for some reason.

Yes, staff driving a units vehicle or towing a units trailer is not normal. I can't say if it is unique to Beaumont; however, I have been to many scout camps and never experienced or heard of this before.

So what is the reasoning behind this? I am imagining something like all non-staff are now forbidden from driving on the camp period? Is that the goal? What are they trying to achieve, what is the true goal here?

I am not in the troop, I am third party that was approached for advice.