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Scouting is becoming more expensive but it isn't super expensive. One of my units recently got a family back from sports. They had pulled all of their kids and pumped them into baseball and after a year of the costs of organized baseball they came right back to scouting. I think the expensive part of scouting is hidden by bad units and units that are too reliant on district/council based programming. One of the troops that I help with is getting ready to do its big fall campout and the cost for a weekend is currently at $70 a person. I'm struggling to understand why, with our state parks and how cheap it is to camp in them the cost should be more in line with $20 a person (for a 2 night 3 day campout). The council fees are ridiculous. Michigan is $85 a person which is the highest in my neck of the woods. I look across the council line and I have no idea what they are getting for that $85 that we are not getting in my council and we're barely paying a council fee here.

The timeline is definitely fuzzy. National isn't pressuring enough change at the council level, councils are far too independent. As a franchise national does not control market saturation well enough. The Churchill report recommended 100-150 councils; my assessment and the huge improvement in telecommunications since that report make me though we should probably have less than 100 councils.

I am a big fan of running the rainfly to the ground instead of outer poles. It's hard to describe and for some reason I have no pictures of it; however, there is a way to make a short rainfly with nothing but 2 hiking sticks, some paracord, and 6 tent stakes that can hold up in moderately rough weather. I've been involved in the logging/lumber trade off and on for over 40 years and I get what people say about axes and hatchets and how to properly use them; however, a tool is a tool and if you wear it out "early" from actual functional use then so be it. If you're backpacking and you need to use a hatchet to work the ground or pound something it I find that preferrable to carrying an extra 10 pounds of weight that could harm your (or a youths) back. After a trek you can always work a hatchet with a bastard file, stores readily sell files and hatches but not new backs or knees.

Generally speaking in all non-profits when you complain you are really volunteering. There is certainly a nicer way to say it, but sometimes you just have to tell these mouthy parents that if they want change they need to step the-f-up or shut up.

National is not "publicly" releasing membership numbers. It's not hard for volunteers to get those numbers though, just have to ask your district leadership. My understanding is that membership is down nationwide; however, with the new membership method we won't have a really good apples-to-apples look until December 31st. My council just did a hard shift from fundraising to recruiting, and every unit in my district was given a made up recruitment number that was arbitrary. My understanding (if the numbers being shared in my council are correct) is that my council isn't even trying to recruit to keep membership stable. Even if we hit these made up recruitment numbers we're (the council) going to come in something like 5-10% below our previous post covid membership peak for this recruitment push. I think the most alarming thing about what is going on is the number of units folding. All of nationals numbers, analysis, etc ... from the CST's and NAM meetings were tied to the fact that packs and troops are roughly the average same size for various reasons and that "super units" are anomalies and we need more units to actually gain more scouts.

Typically I am pretty hawkish on why is this coming up/dredged up/being made a thing but this time ... geez. This is the sort of guy that needs to get hit as hard as possible and this case needs to be publicized as much as possible. So from what I can tell we have a relatively wealthy (at least compared to the rest of the US population), well educated, law degree, politically connected, strong arm sort of d-bag. I wonder what/how he threatened the council back in 2014-2016 to try and keep this from the police? Did he threaten to sue? Did he threaten to dry up donations? Epstein junior here needs more spotlight.

If we went way way way back to the original structure we'd be better off. Back in the beginning councils only provided support in training leaders and starting new units. When you start reading historical documents about scouting in America, the pre-war scouting was one or two adults taking a whole troop to random places for weeks on end in the summer, and meetings the rest of the year preparing for that summer adventure. I am not sure if our culture can handle that today; in the era of digital record keeping and zoom meetings I think we have too many councils and too many council level leaders. The district is the heart of scouting and the money hustle and need to be seen in the office is keeping district executives from building up the movement in the communities. We don't have to screw good paid scouters out of jobs; if we could get on the same page we could just eliminate non-district executive positions as people retire/move on. It could be as easy as every time a scout executive quits/retires national should just force a merger if it makes sense/doesn't make a council TOO big. And then let natural attrition work the other duplicate positions out. National is hearing it. It's the councils that don't hear it.

What we need is fewer councils. There's a lot of executive staff that can be eliminated and their salaries can be used to fund program. In this age of telecommuting and cloud computing I am not sure if we even need council HQ buildings anymore; just shift that maintenance line item to camps and let everyone work from home in the communities they are supposed to serve.

There are several charging over 200 just for the council fee.

There are 4 according to beascout.org, which considering the size and density of Syracuse I will admit is a pathetically small size. Syracuse is weird though as the city is sort of starfish shaped with a lot of urban sister cities (14 total counting those cities) packed in tight to it comparable to how a midwestern city of the same population would just have neighborhoods. I would be less concerned about the troops and more concerned about the very low number of packs. It takes 2 or more packs to sustain a troop and there are only like 6 packs in the city, about 20 in the metro. The city itself only has a population of 148k which for being the hub of a 600k metro is tiny; the "suburbs" significantly out number the "big city" compared to other metros. It's not the last troop, there are at least 3 more according to beascout.org the city isn't as big as it seems. The fact that the city has only 6 packs is the real problem, I would say that at least 2 of those 4 troops are going to fold within a year or two because there are not enough packs to sustain the troops. This "last troop in Syracuse" might become true within the decade.

But Marx, Lennon, Mao, and every other communist leader would. BP would probably say something far worse than me considering his views on socialism and communism in his original guide to scoutmasters.

Why is this repeating? This is an old story and not true, this is not the last scout troop in Syracuse, it wasn't true when this got originally posted and it's not true now. WTF is going on here?

$170 sounds cheap compared to several other councils. District staff actually helping to set up a show and sell sounds awesome, my council could get way more sales if they did that.

more courteous .... that's some communist nonsense.

I remember PFDs being discussed the last time I did the online course; however, I don't recall it being like this or in relation to open water swimming.

Not how corporate lawyers work. Corporate lawyers are on retainer and get paid whether they work or not; so BSA's corporate lawyers are just being put to work right now. You're getting played by your lawyers who are taking a cut of your restitution.

Yeah that's the lawyers keeping you on the hook. They're playing you for more fee's and services.

To truly understand the program and how it needs to be ran, people just need to read so much more than they want. I've turned down being SM twice, and I'm bring probed for a third offer now; by the time I know the program well enough to be a good SM all of my kids will be in college 😛

It was free back then, but that was a completely different era. Clock hours and minutes were not bird dogged by the Department of Education; we literally did those courses during school time. I remember everyone doing the long term swimming training and evaluation for water survival being in the school pool for like 3 hours instead of going to regular class. With all the federal overreach into the local school programming the programs I went through could never happen during instructional time today; they would have to be all after school programs which the districts would have to pay teachers overtime for. Geez, this summer every pack in the area got a taste of those non instructional time janitorial fees at all the local schools ($150 an hour, they really didn't want the packs in the schools June-August).

The assets of those 82 insurance companies do not solely belong to any 1 policy. There is no guarantee that they even have the assets to pay anything out. I'll cede the fact that there might be more money, but there certainly isn't what you think there is. To your second point, they already have moved on. They are exciting bankruptcy and restructuring. Per your posted information BSA has signed over their rights to those other 82 insurance policies. BSA, it's councils, and the other entities that were party to the settlement are done, they're moving on. Legally they are done.

My feelings are hurt but it has nothing to do with this thread ...

Many many many decades ago Minnesota had this under a different name; it's where I went through my first wilderness survival and cold weather training. It was integrated right into the school programs if your parents allowed you to sign up. This was in no way shape or form a competitor to scouting. This will actually help scouting; as youth get a taste for the outdoors they will want it more and scouting is right there to help them get that more.

Well the settlement is 2.4B, there is no more money past that. The councils, national, the other payees who have signed have moved on, filed their tax and debt paperwork, and are moving on; yet there is this voice of the internet thinking 10s of billions of dollars are coming from somewhere. It's just not how financials of businesses or non-profits work; if there was additional outstanding debt for BSA they would have to report that in their filings.

My experience is that CORs are not engaged; they don't have their training done, none know that they are voting members of the district and council by virtue of their position. DE's and DC's do not engage the CORS because they don't want to lose control of the narrative or agenda. I would add to this that professional staffers making arbitrary decisions or attempting to micro manage has pushed so many good volunteers in my council out into the cold. There is training and a recommended method from national; none of the districts in my area have ever followed the national policy. I always wonder about the stupidity or ego of these 20 something DE"s that they think their method is going to be better than 115 years of refined experienced BSA policy. There is a point where just filling seats with butts and refining the selection over a course of years is the only option. My district for example is 100% non-functional. It's mostly our past DE's fault for selecting a total POS of a nominating chair and letting him gatekeep; our new DE is starting to own the problem. The POS nominating chair tried to exclude "his enemies" on the committee from the nominating slate a couple of years ago and the DC straight up stopped the meeting and told the DE he had better reconsider the slate and who was being excluded due to how much work they (the excluded) do. I always wondered why large troops didn't run their own summer camp. 5 days, 5 to 10 different merit badges. Lower costs, more flexibility in scheduling, less wasted time just running around.

I don't think councils care about GTSS. In my experience it's all about not having a near miss or reportable YPT incident. Units can basically do whatever they want as long as no abuse happens. I got pulled into some non-sense with a unit last year where they were repeatedly violating the GTSS. Event with parents and leaders asking me for help and guidance the key leaders of the unit wouldn't take any suggestions. I escalated the issue to council because I could see the situation spiraling out of control. Nothing was done, I started getting the cold shoulder at district and council level and meetings were always "we'll set that up later". Then a serious incident that pulled national in happened; that's the only point that anyone from district or council cared about GTSS. It takes a professional scouters job being on the line to bring GTSS compliance.