Tron

Good points about making it difficult to get to the in person council events. Before your merger were CORs/COR delegates going to those things?

Yeah I see what you see. Looks like national is not forcing small councils to merge but is reducing their voting ability unless they grow to at least 5000 scouts. I sort of like this 1 rep/vote per 5000 scouts, it gives a huge voice to well performing councils that are recruiting like mad.

A good troop will have a calendar and be able to point a WDL to the most fun meetings but at the same time will allow potential crossovers to visit as often and to any meeting including the PLC.

Absolutely true. and?

It really depends on the scout and on the troop. A mature 10 year old that powers through their AOL can in my experience crossover the 1st day of summer break between 4th and 5th grade and have absolutely no problems. What do you think about parent meeting and explain the options for the scouts and explain the risk/reward? When a go getter Webelos crosses over a year earlier than expected with their AOL they basically gain an extra year to get their Eagle.

Is there some formula for condensing or dividing councils? The local council here and most of the surrounding councils are in the 4-5000 scout range; does that put them at risk of merger? That is interesting, do you have an example (I would like to check out a council website of such a small council to see what a council that small is up to).

Was the contribution to the fund listed only as cash because over 2 years passed between the sale of the camp back in 2021 and the actual post deposit of funds to the settlement fund? Meaning, since the cash had been possibly co-mingled for 2 years the amount tied to the sale of the property was no longer considered a property disbursement.

Didn't 86% of the plaintiffs, the BSA, and almost all of the insurance companies (the insurance companies that voted against the settlement are the ones trying to get out of paying anything IMHO) vote to approve the settlement? Over 250 million has been spent on legal bills so far; that's money that the plaintiffs are not getting; I think part of the equitable mootness are the judges trying to keep the lawyers from bleeding funds away from the victims.

Holy cow that is now a geographically huge council with a lot of population.

After reading the information at the 2 links I wonder if the cash contribution only issue is because the camp was sold a few years ago and not more recently?

The abused in scouting ads are going to slowly go away now that the settlement is winding down to the disbursement stage. The sad part is those ads are going to switch to something else now that the lawyers are getting paid out and wont have new money coming from scouting. Any bets that youth football is going to have a class action suit due to concussions and tbi?

There is a missing aspect here. Equitable Mootness also involves influence of simply ending/moving the bankruptcy forward or toward completion. In relation to this case Equitable Mootness is certainly in use to end the whole process and allow everyone to move forward from a common point in time and from a common standing.

Good points but not all troops have this problem. 2 local troops (to me) do have CO's that provide funds to the troops to help run the program; the question for parents in troops that are getting financial assistance from their CO's is what is that assistance going to?

Dealing with this right now; got my district on an issue at a local troop because several of the leaders refuse to accept that they can't call and have 1v1 phone conversations with scouts.

I liked his statements on closing the gray areas and cleaning up the training. The fact that someone at national is acknowledging that some of the training is unclear and creates gray areas is a BIG positive.

This is the core point of the lawsuit and bankruptcy for so many; they want BSA to fold, they are not seeking justice.

Your numbers seem quite accurate; however, the depiction of needing to do so much is not. The problem might not be the cost of scouting, but the expectation that scouts go SO far above and beyond to qualify for rank advancement, OA membership, etc ... Do I want my kids to go to Philmont and other high adventure bases? Yes, do they have to? No. Over the span of potentially 7-8 years of being a scout in a Troop most scouts only need to camp 3 nights a year. I think bad units make scouting too expensive; poorly trained leaders adding to the standard make scouting too expensive. In my area the ave

Most people have no clue what it takes to get onto a college team. The first thing people need are genetics; when both parents walk up with all of their 5'9" or less height and unimpressive body mass index I find it hard to believe that they think their kids are going to develop much differently and have any chance of playing sports at even a varsity high school level. I shall diverge from scouting a little to illustrate a point that I run into with parents in my area all of the time. So many parents just have no clue how sports work because so few people have ever participated in sport

The price is nothing. Literally super cheap compared to most anything else. It's $80 a year, councils can match that and bring the total to $160. In comparison it's the heart of high school football season right now and the average family spends $671 a season on football; that's right $671 for 12 weeks of participation(about a million participants a season). The couch potatoes are about to spend $167 a year for Disney+ (just over 147 million subscriptions in the US). Scouting is cheap compared to just about anything else you want to compare it to; sports, gaming, tv.

That website is localized and I believe a Massachusetts based program. What I have heard rumblings about is a BSA national wide program called Catalyst BSA which is targeted at "scouts" in their 20s and 30s. Do other countries have adult scouting programs that BSA might have been looking at to extend the program longer/continue to grow membership revenue?

Does anyone know what project "Catalyst BSA" is? I've heard of it before, but no one seems to have details. Yesterday I heard it mentioned again and this time in reference to the "new program for scouts in their 20's and 30's" rumor that came out of the national meeting this year.

Messenger of peace carries over. There is also debate about recruiter patch crossing over. The rules state that the badge can be earned twice, they don't say that the badge has to be earned twice.

Troop shopping is GREAT if units are running the program instead of doing their own thing. If everyone is running the program the only difference between units would be personality and driving distance to unit meetings.

What do we know about this mechanism for the public to search for YPT violations? Is it a website? Do we enter the state/council/unit number and a list of YPT violations (potentially redacted) populates? I am curious as I would just like to know, and I am also curious to know if a unit folds and a new unit replaces it at the same CO with a different unit number will the search return zero results on that unit?

Training is key; however, it doesn't matter how well trained a volunteer is if they don't want to run the actual program AND it's all about "their kids" and not providing a good program. All of the dying troops in my area have the same things in common: no relationship to a pack, cadre of key 3 leaders who need to rotate out, doing their own thing. All of the dying packs in my area have the same things in common: only have a relationship with 1 troop, do not run year round programs, doing their own thing.