"turf war" problems in changing packs

[GS-CS_leader 11]

My tiny "dying" pack wants to join another nearby pack, however even though the school is only 2.5 miles from ours, it is in a different council. The other pack was initially enthusiastic because they lacked the two dens that we would provide. But that pack is now backing off because of the warnings of one of their committee members who knows the unit commissioner of our pack. She says that our council will "is going to scream bloody murder if our Pack picks up your members".

 

Our CC has just written a letter to the district executive asking him to clarify the situation and to let us know if there are any "rules" preventing our boys or our dens from joining the other pack. I'd be surprised if there is any official reason that we can't join another pack, even one in a different council, but it sounds like some people may try to make it very difficult. Can anyone tell me if there are indeed any "rules" about this situation? And does anyone have advice on how best to handle this? I'm afraid the only real trump card I know we have is one we don't want to have to play: all three leaders and the CC have decided that if we are prevented from joining another pack, that we will disband and the boys will simply leave scouting. I hope that once "they" understand that, that they will relent.

 

Here are some details:

Our pack was a very small pack with only two dens even when started just 2 years ago. But next year, we'll be in a completely untenable situation when 2 families move and our CC will not be able to continue in the position due to work demands. Then we will have only 4 Webelos and 6 Bears, with no Cub Master, no Committee Chair, and no Tiger or Wolf dens. We've made earnest recruiting attempts, but I already knew from many years as a GS leader that interest by parents in scouting is quite low in our area. Also, even if the district executive could manage to find some new families, I'm not willing to deal with new parent members as CC and CM since they would be likely to have no idea about what they are supposed to do. Our pack struggled this year as it was, so I'm not the only leader in our pack who refuses to go through another year like that. The end result is that our pack finally came to the conclusion that we cannot possibly continue as our own pack next year.

 

Our pack can't join the two other packs in our town for very definite reasons. And some of the parents are completely unwilling to go any farther for pack meetings than to the meetings of the pack we found, so other packs in the council are also not suitable. This leaves joining a nearby pack from the other council (we are only a half mile from the council line) as are only viable option. Needless to say we are dismayed by what looks like attempts to close off this option to us.

[ScoutNut 147]

Boys & their families can leave a Pack at any time & join any Pack they wish. There is no "rule" that says who can join what Pack.

 

Yes, your current council (DE) might be upset. They will be losing a unit & boys from their membership. Their bottom line numbers will be reduced by 10 boys. So what. That is not your problem, or the problem of any of the other families in the Pack, or any other Pack any of the families chose to join. Your current council can NOT stop anyone from joining a BSA unit in the next council, or any other council.

 

It sounds like the only "problem" you have is with that one committee member.

 

You know that you don't have to move as a group, don't you. If some families want to stay in town, some want to join a pack further away, & some others want to go elsewhere they are perfectly able to do so on their own.

 

Are there any other Packs in the nearby council that are possibilities? I would visit as many Packs as possible to see how their programs look. If you have other possibilities, I would tell the one Pack with the gossipy committee member that you will be going elsewhere.

 

[packsaddle 753]

I agree with ScoutNut except that I wouldn't worry about the one loudmouth. The comment that someone else is going to be upset is speculative and you can't let someone else's irrational behavior control your life.

Do whatever you think is best and don't sweat the complaints. If your council is as non-responsive as mine you will get no help whatsoever and the DE will indeed be likely to try to dissuade you. If you really want to go, ignore him and do it anyway.

If the other pack seems to back away, just go ahead and fill out the appropriate registration form and let them decide NOT to allow you in. I doubt that will happen. This is a tempest in a teapot.

[GS-CS_leader 11]

>It sounds like the only "problem" you have is with that one committee member.

Well, it's more than that (see below).

 

The committee member with objections is the Scoutmaster of the BS Troop that the pack is affiliated with (let's call the one we want to join "Pack B"). The deal is that she personally knows our pack's Unit Commissioner. Pack B seems to be building up from a near collapse that caused them to lose their Bear and Wolf dens to another nearby pack. It sounds like she has a lot of influence in the pack. The person I've been talking to is a super enthusiastic Tiger leader whom I "met" through these forums (and whom I expect to end up reading these posts ) He is now acting CM. This "TDL" has expressed his support for me and my pack (if that is the only way that we will stay in scouting), but thinks that the rest of his pack leadership will not want to get into the mess if it's going to cause trouble from our council.

 

I feel that TDL already has his work cut out for him in trying to build up his pack (although our joining could really help with that!), so I don't want him to jeopardize that on our account.

 

>You know that you don't have to move as a group, don't you. If some families want to stay in >town, some want to join a pack further away, & some others want to go elsewhere they are >perfectly able to do so on their own.

>

Yes, I know. The DL and I (currently ADL, but DL next year if I don't quit) had extensive discussions about this. But if they don't continue with us, the other families will certainly just drop out.

 

As far as bringing along the other den, I've provided information to the Wolf DL as a service, but have made it clear that what to do next year is their own decision. To be honest, I have suspicions that he was ready to hang it up and was almost relieved that the demise of the pack would be an easy way out for him (he currently does not have an ADL). At least that is one reason I think he was very non-committal and lukewarm when I first discussed this with him. But he has warmed to the idea and the families in his pack expressed a lot of interest at the pack meeting that he could not attend, but in which I described Pack B and proposed our dens joining it.

 

>Are there any other Packs in the nearby council that are possibilities? I would visit as many

>Packs as possible to see how their programs look. If you have other possibilities, I would tell

>the one Pack with the gossipy committee member that you will be going elsewhere.

Not really. There is another pack that is even closer. I think their school is just over a mile from ours. But they are also struggling and have no younger dens just like us. They have a Bear Den with 10 boys. So it won't work for our 4 Bears to join that den. But the den numbers would be quite unequal, but it could cause bad feelings if there was any shifting of scouts from one den to another and I would not want to try to push any new boys to join our den just because we are smaller when they might prefer to

stick with their friends from school in the other den. And we'd be leaving one dying pack to join another dying in the same way. We do not want to have to go through this again---once is bad enough. At least Pack B has a stong Tiger den, decent pack leadership coverage, and good potential for other new young dens in the future since its school has been able to start up new dens in the past.

 

Other families are not willing to go to pack meetings any farther away that Pack B's. I had to show one of my den families on a map that it was only 2.5 miles away before she was willing to even consider it. Another factor is that most of the families in our pack do not want to join a large pack where we might feel like minority outsiders. We're also proud enough that we don't want to be taken on as a "charity" case where the other pack sees themselves as "saving" us rather than as us bringing our own contributions to the pack strength. The non-religioius packs in our area mostly have boys from one or possibly two schools. We already know that we are not likely to get new scouts from our school (based on our failed recruiting efforts), so our only hope would be to get scouts from the school(s) of the new pack. But as noted above, those boys would probably want to join dens with boys from their own schools.

 

Our BDL and I are really the only ones willing to put substantial effort into finding a way for the boys to continue in scouting next year. There aren't a lot of CS options in our area, so it takes more effort to have your son participate if you do something besides your own school's pack.

If we can't join another pack, I'm 99% sure that all of the boys will drop out of scouting.

 

> I agree with ScoutNut except that I wouldn't worry about the one loudmouth. The comment that >someone else is going to be upset is speculative and you can't let someone else's irrational

> behavior control your life.

It is not "speculative". Our CC has already had more than one detailed conversation with the DE. The DE just ignores reality and keeps talking about how we just need better recruiting. He is new to the job, so I'm sure he is just parroting the usual council-level stuff. I've seen it in our GS council too. They think that just because in some areas it's easy find adults to be scout leaders and volunteers that it's all a matter of method rather than acknowledging that different areas have completely different kinds of people. When the DE couldn't get anywhere with our CC, he tried our CM, but may not realize that our CM is moving away next year and anyway, is all talk and no action. Our CM is the only one in the pack who is still talking about more recruiting, but he just thinks if he talks enough he can get someone ELSE to do the work (same way he has done, or rather not done, most of the CM jobs). All that did was to get the CM try to talk people into going along with another recruiting effort which provoked a really harsh public email rebuke from the CC (who is normally a really tactful, even-tempered man).

 

>Do whatever you think is best and don't sweat the complaints. If your council is as non->responsive as mine you will get no help whatsoever and the DE will indeed be likely to try to >dissuade you. If you really want to go, ignore him and do it anyway.

That was our first approach. We also kept it somewhat quiet. I sneakily sent out information about the new pack using direct email instead of our egroup to keep our Unit Commissioner out of it. I wanted us to be much further along in making the change before they got wind and started to make trouble.

 

>If the other pack seems to back away, just go ahead and fill out the appropriate registration >form and let them decide NOT to allow you in. I doubt that will happen. This is a tempest in a >teapot.

What are you suggesting: that we simply barge in and "crash" Pack B's pack meetings? If the pack leadership doesn't want us, I don't feel it is productive to be too aggressive about it. I'm just hoping that they will be more sympathetic when they understand that not to let us in probably means 10 boys dropping out of scouting. I've looked into other packs, but this is the only one that seems to completely fit our needs. It's so frustrating because it seems like such a perfect match---we could help them even as they help us. I've put too much time, effort, and emotional energy into this already, so I'm giving up if this attempt fails.(This message has been edited by GS-CS_leader)

[packsaddle 753]

What I'm suggesting is to 'call the question' for the other pack leadership. From what you have written, your pack seems hopeless (unless I've missed something) and the other pack should either accept or reject. If the fit is as perfect as it seems then the decision will fall in your favor. If not then you are no worse off than now. Regardless if your pack dissolves or if it merges with the other, your current DE is going to lose the unit. We had a similar situation years ago and I sympathize. Intelligence and motivation must not always be part of the job description for those positions.

 

[GS-CS_leader 11]

> Regardless if your pack dissolves or if it merges with the other, your current DE is going to

> lose the unit. We had a similar situation years ago and I sympathize. Intelligence and

> motivation must not always be part of the job description for those positions.

I believe that one problem is that council staff is rewarded for numbers of boys and units, not for making sure that the boys are well-served. Also, they do not usually have a personal stake in it in the form of having their own sons being affected by what they do, nor do most of them seek out the job because of a deep commitment to and love of children or even the institution of scouting. (Our DE from last year shocked some leaders when she openly admitted that she disliked children! And to judge by comments from our former CM who dropped out with her son from scouting and is still bitter about interactions with the former DE, she wasn't very good with adults either.)

 

Scouting staff positions neither pay exceptionally well, nor do they give people with those jobs much status in the outside world. So the people in those positions are not necessarily the cream of the crop when it comes to people or administrative skills. I'm not saying that they are all that bad, but some of the situations are sticky and require real skill to resolve. I also believe that the staff often receive their training from other people who are themselves too far removed themselves from close and direct contact with the boys or adult volunteers and do not have any real experience of scouting in various different areas where the situations may be very different.

 

It's just a shame when these people do not recognize their own limitations, do not listen to the people who are trying to explain a situation, and actively impede action that would be the best for the boys.

[GS-CS_leader 11]

packsaddle:

> What I'm suggesting is to 'call the question' for the other pack leadership.

 

Pack B's CM wants his pack to stand back until the dust settles between us and our council.

 

Right now my pack's CC's goal is to get the DE to admit in writing that there is no official rule preventing us from joining another pack. I think he thought that might be good enough to allow us to go off and join the other pack. But it's going to be tougher now that it sounds like Pack B might require us to get our current council's cooperation for the change. So then I think the next step is to make our council understand that we're leaving their council no matter what, whether by joining a different pack in the other council, or by dropping out of scouting. Our council is not going to keep us no matter what they do. Our CC thought that it seemed to confrontational to bring that up right away. I feel that given the DE's past refusal to face the facts, we will need to be very direct or he will persist in unrealistic ideas about how our pack can be saved. But I trust our CC to address the issue in the way that is least likely to prematurely ruffle feathers and has the best chance of getting our council to agree to our switching to the other council.

 

Our pack's next committee meeting is this Friday. Our CC's letter to the DE says that he needs answers to our questions about joining another pack before then. At the last committee meeting, the UC did not come and our CM came for only a part of the meeting. I wonder if the DE and UC will come now that they know we are serious about leaving the council. If they come, it will certainly change the agenda of the meeting. My co-DL wants us to discuss possible ways to use up funds in our pack's account.

 

The next deadline after that is that if I don't get reassurance that we'll be able to join the other pack, I'm going to cancel out on both the Webelos change-of-position and BALOO (outdoor training) in mid-May that I registered and paid for. Too bad I already bought vaious Webelos books. I'm certainly glad that I did not already register and pay for my family to attend a CS summer camp weekend.

[John-in-KC 311]

Ms GS-CS leader,

 

YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR SON can change packs at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. As a parent, your first interest has to be the growth and development of your child!

 

As a Scouter, any movement of a unit requires coordination of the committee members with the Chartered Organziation!! The Chartered Partner OWNS the equipment of your unit. Equally, it OWNS the Treasury. In the dissolution of a unit, the CP can either surrender the equipment and funds to the Council, for redistribution elsewhere, or it can hold both equipment and funds in trust for the re-establishment of a unit at some point in the future.

 

The CC needs to be talking with the Executive Officer of the Chartered Partner and the COR, NOT the Unit Commissioner. Commissioner's are the friends of a unit, trying to provide advice and assistance. They do not exercise authority and ownership. That is the function of the Chartered Partner. As I understand Girl Scouting and Boy Scouting, this is a fundamental difference. In Boy Scouting, the local community group is the licensee of the program from the Council, and has ownership rights to the unit.

 

You imply the area has a thin enough youth population that only one Pack is truly supportable. If that be the case, then it makes sense for the CC to sit down with both his own COR and the gaining unit COR, as well as the gaining unit CC and perhaps Cubmaster. Mergers take planning and focus on the youth to make happen. Impatience hurts, not helps, the process.

 

My thoughts.

 

John

A Chartered Organization Representative

[GS-CS_leader 11]

John-in-KC:

>YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR SON can change packs at any time, for any reason, or no reason

> at all. As a parent, your first interest has to be the growth and development of your child!

I'm not interested in taking my son and myself and going off on our own. Funny thing is that I didn't feel this way when I first started to think about our options, but I'm now committed to either finding a way for all of us to continue, or to have myself and my son drop out with the others.

 

>As a Scouter, any movement of a unit requires coordination of the committee members with

>the Chartered Organziation!! The Chartered Partner OWNS the equipment of your unit.

>Equally, it OWNS the Treasury. In the dissolution of a unit, the CP can either surrender the

> equipment and funds to the Council, for redistribution elsewhere, or it can hold both

> equipment and funds in trust for the re-establishment of a unit at some point in the future.

Our pack was only (re)-chartered (after at least a 10 year hiatus) two years ago, so our only equipment is a pair of flags: US and pack. I've never seen or heard from any member of our CO. I have only seen a name for the CO representative on an address list. As far as I know, our pack started up without any start-up funds or equipment and all our funds were raised from selling popcorn. We'll all be pretty upset if we are prevented from using the money that we raised to benefit our boys before we leave or disband. I'm assuming that we'll want to fund a final activity with most of our funds.

 

>The CC needs to be talking with the Executive Officer of the Chartered Partner and the COR, >NOT the Unit Commissioner. Commissioner's are the friends of a unit, trying to provide advice >and assistance. They do not exercise authority and ownership. That is the function of the >Chartered Partner.

The CC is talking to the District Executive, a council staff member, not the UC. Our CO has provided two flags and nothing else. It is a local Rotary branch which is not at all involved in our pack. My understanding is that the CO does not have the authority to prevent pack members from joining a different pack either.

 

>You imply the area has a thin enough youth population that only one Pack is truly supportable. >If that be the case, then it makes sense for the CC to sit down with both his own COR and the >gaining unit COR, as well as the gaining unit CC and perhaps Cubmaster. Mergers take >planning and focus on the youth to make happen. Impatience hurts, not helps, the process.

Well, that's not quite the case. My town's youth population is not thin, but there are a lot of new immigrants (with non-English-speaking parents), and just a general lack of interest in scouting by parents. In the case of my school district (my town has several tiny school districts composed of 1-4 schools), few parents participate in the PTA. I believe that my town of approx 60K people has only one BS troop. The town in the other council borders my town, but is demographically quite different: fewer new immigrants, but a sizable percentage African-Americans and sizable percentage of much more affluent families than in my town (which ranges from lower- to upper-middle class). That town has quite a few packs and troops. In contrast, if you go in the other direction out toward the center of our current district, the other towns that our on our end of the district also do not have a large number of packs and troops.

 

That's another reason why changing councils is appealing: we'd be in an area with much more general support for scouting. Also something I mentioned in another thread is that the other district's roundtables are about 2 miles away compared to our current district's roundtables that are about a half hour drive away. This is because we are far from the center of gravity of our district or our council.

 

We were moving in the direction of having some kind of joint pack meeting so that the families of the two packs could meet and size each other up. We were well aware that the "chemistry" between the two packs might not be right. If each side was interested in proceeding, then we would have the two pack committees and leadership meet. The other pack also has a shadow CO, so I didn't think it would be useful to have the old and new CO's discuss anything.

 

Unfortunately, that plan has gotten somewhat derailed. I was hoping that we might be able to make arrangements in time for our pack to be able to do summertime activities with the other pack. Otherwise, there will be no summertime activities because the Bear DL will be out of the country for most of the summer, and I would prefer to put my efforts into a new rather than a dying pack, and the other den leader has never done anything outside his own den.

 

But our late-breaking news is positive: The DE says he just wants the chance to talk to the parents of our pack and the chance to carry out his "direct mail" recruitment at our school. He can't attend our committee meeting because he will be out of the country, but he will be sending another person with 20 years of experience with local packs and possibly even his boss. I already have a big list of all the options and issues we considered. I'm hoping that once they see that it isn't just a random uninformed decision, then they will be gracious about letting us decide our own fate without giving us further hassles. I just hope they don't take too long because I'll need to leave after an hour to get ready for a GS overnight early the next morning.

[GS-CS_leader 11]

John, (you can drop the "Ms."--I think of my login as my online first name)

 

A few more comments on your suggestions (Thanks for your response!)

 

>....makes sense for the CC to sit down with both his own COR and the >gaining unit COR,

> as well as the gaining unit CC and perhaps Cubmaster. Mergers take >planning and focus

> on the youth to make happen. Impatience hurts, not helps, the process.

It's not quite a "merger". We bring only 1.5 dens (with a total of 10 boys) and 3 leaders (2 "trained"), and none of the key pack leadership positions, CM, ACM, or CC. That is, after all, the essense of why we are not going to be a viable pack after the end of this school year.

 

I am anxious to have some agreeement that our pack can join another before the end of the school year. That is when we lose our CM (even if I'm not completely happy with the job he's done, he's better than no CM at all) and CC (I'm worried that the poor guy has jeopardized his chances for getting academic tenure because of all the time and effort that he's put in CS this year when he really didn't have time, but couldn't find a replacement.) Despite some parents asking me to be CM (seeing that I already ended up doing parts of the CM job), I cannot simultaneously be WDL and CM and CC. I thought about organizing a summertime activity for our current pack. I gave that up after imagining the pathetic sight of a few boys marching in our town's 4th of July parade with the pack flag that we had decided to abandon. I started to see if there would be interest in having families attend a summer CS camp. But then I realized that it would be depressing to attend a camp of the council we had decided to leave. If we can change councils, I'd love to check out their camps, but I don't want to give my son false hope if we are going to end up dropping out. The participation of our pack's families for summer events was scant last year anyway---I arranged for our pack to attend the Scout Day for the minor league baseball team and only 4 families including mine attended.

 

If we don't have arrangements put into place by the beginning of the summer, I worry that after a summer of no CS we'll lose the interest that we have now and some of the families will decide to drop out. Also, many of our families will be be away on vacation at various times over the summer, so it is not a good time to have any joint events with another pack to see if we are compatible. Therefore, any progress in that direction will be put on hold for months. So it is not so much impatience on my part as a worry that we have a limited window for action.(This message has been edited by GS-CS_leader)

[scoutingagain 20]

Wow. Talk about making something that should be simple more complicated than it needs to be.

 

GS-CS, I'm very sorry to hear you would drop out of scouting unless you can officially "merge" your pack with the other.

 

My suggestion is to talk to the CM or CC of Pack B and ask if they are accepting new members. If they are, ask for 10 applications and hand them out to the members of your current pack. Let them know you will be joining the other pack and would love to have them join as well. Find out if Pack B has any summer activities you can participate in.

 

As noted, however, any money you have from your current pack will revert to the Chartered Organization. So, have one last bash or outing with the remaining funds before you decide to quit.

 

That is all you need to do. What the Chartered Organization does with the flags, the charter or whoever else remains with the current pack is up to them. You do not need to be concerned about it. Either you end up with a sufficient number of families from your old pack in Pack B or you don't. The only "agreement" you need to concern yourself with is if Pack B is will to accept the membership applications or not. You do not need any agreement from a District, a Council, A Unit Commissioner or anyone else. I can't see how a Pack that wants to grow and accepts new members jeapordizes itself in anyway. Everything else is someone else's concern, you don't have to worry about it.

 

Good Luck and I hope things work out.

 

SA

[John-in-KC 311]

I think it's time to cut to the chase. Those who want to go over to the new unit should. Those who are willing should volunteer their services in the new unit, get trained, and help out all . As SA again said, everything else is not worth the time and energy of debate. Go to a pack meeting, bring a youth and an adult leader app along

 

YIS

[GS-CS_leader 11]

scoutingagain:

>GS-CS, I'm very sorry to hear you would drop out of scouting unless you can officially

>"merge" your pack with the other.

I've looked into other packs. Most of them are not suitable for one reason or another--wrong religion, schedule conflicts, den leader who is dad of the bully from my son's Hebrew class who got other kids to gang up on him, etc. I suppose there are at least couple of other packs in the neighboring town that I haven't looked at closely that could work out for just my son, but I don't want to "abandon" the other scouts, especially the family with the BDL and CC who worked so hard to start up and keep the pack going. But between scheduling and religious concerns, finding a pack that fits both our needs is tough, and I'd still feel scummy to settle for a pack that would not work for the other two families. That's why it is so amazing that the pack that we want to join does and so frustrating that we're having trouble.

 

>My suggestion is to talk to the CM or CC of Pack B and ask if they are accepting new members.

I first asked the acting CM about joining his pack about 2 months ago. I had already been in contact with him after I responded to his intro posting with some advice on local field trips and a museum overnight that I had just done with my GS troop. After I asked him about joining, I had a long talk on the phone and we have exchanged many detailed emails. He was initially enthusiastic since we could help build up his pack much faster than year by year with each new group of Tiger. Initially he convinced his pack leadership that it was a good idea.

 

We tried to arrange a joint meeting earlier, but Pack B kept having scheduling problems for their pinewood derby, so the joing meeting also got pushed later. And then just before I was planning to attend their pinewood derby to meet the pack and its leadership, I got an email that Pack B is backing away and its leadership does not want to accept us if our current council does not approve of the change.

 

> If they are, ask for 10 applications and hand them out to the members of your current pack.

> Let them know you will be joining the other pack and would love to have them join as well.

We can't exactly "force" them to take us. Even if we could, what kind of relationship would that lead to? I'm still hoping that we can convince our current district to accept that it might that it might be in our best interest to change councils and to give the change "their blessing".

 

> Find out if Pack B has any summer activities you can participate in.

Their CM says they might go for the summertime pack award. And he's planning to try go to one or even two CS summer camp weekends and is hoping to get some other families to go to. If we can join his pack, I'll eagerly bring my family to one of the weekends. In fact, my husband and I are even willing to do the 5 hour drive up to the really nice camp. But none of those make sense if we don't join his pack or council.

 

>As noted, however, any money you have from your current pack will revert to the Chartered >Organization. So, have one last bash or outing with the remaining funds before you decide

> to quit.

We suspected as much. We bought nice birdhouse kits for all the scouts for the April pack meeting ("feathered friends") and we probably will do a last dinner or outing.

 

> Either you end up with a sufficient number of families from your old pack in Pack B or you

> don't.

That's not my worry. I already know that all the families just want to stay with their den leaders, and it wouldn't matter to me if any of them wanted to join a different pack from the one I join. I just want to try to make available to them the best option I can find.

 

>The only "agreement" you need to concern yourself with is if Pack B is will to accept the >membership applications or not. You do not need any agreement from a District, a Council,

> A Unit Commissioner or anyone else.

We do need the agreement from our council if that is a condition required by Pack B.

 

> I can't see how a Pack that wants to grow and accepts new members jeapordizes itself in

> anyway. Everything else is someone else's concern, you don't have to worry about it.

They may trust the Troop SM on their committee to tell them the right thing to do. And Pack B knows her, but who are we? Just some strangers who don't have any loyalty to their own pack or district. (I think that trying to stick together is showing pack loyalty, but since we'd be leaving the number behind it might be seen differently to others.) Unfortunately, I'm beginning to suspect that it is a personal issue since I just heard that the SM herself moved from my council, so I think she used to be in our UC's pack or troop which is how she knows him. Maybe she promised him when she left that she would never try to get other scouts from my town to follow her and is trying to make good on that promise. Perhaps there were bad feelings when she changed councils which are resurfacing because of our attempt.

 

John:

> As SA again said, everything else is not worth the time and energy of debate. Go to a pack >meeting, bring a youth and an adult leader app along

I always told people that if anyone had ever forced me to take in more girls into my GS troop than I was comfortable with then I'd up and quit. As a result, I've had a "waiting list" for my troop for years, even though my council thinks troops should take girls up to the max allowed by adult:girl ratios (believe it or not, that's 20 first graders for 2 leaders---I'd have burned out and quit long ago with that size troop).

 

Anyway, to get back to the topic: I'm not going to force myself on anyone. Although if my council doesn't cooperate, I'm not above begging them for a chance.

 

I'm still hoping that we can convince our council staff to "do the right thing" and all will be fine.

 

Wish us luck---we need it!

[t158sm 10]

What should be a very simple matter has been made obscenely complicated. GS-CS I'm sorry but you worry too much!

COUNCIL APPROVAL IS A NON-ISSUE. No one at council will "get mad", they might bemoan the loss of a unit with 10 Scouts but that's it.

If the CM of the receiving pack has a problem with this non-issue then show him this thread. Listen to what the good folks on this forum have to say - they know what their talking about. DO WHAT IS BEST FOR THE YOUTH, DON"T LET ADULTS GET IN THE WAY OF THIS.

[GS-CS_leader 11]

t158sm:

> GS-CS I'm sorry but you worry too much!

Now that you mention it, I realize that I'm probably over-reacting due to being treated so badly by our GS council when I was the Service Unit Manager. A council staff person, whom I feel is unprofessional and just plain nasty, asked me to attend a meeting with her and her supervisor up at the council office. So I took time out of my work day and drove 20 miles so that they could chastise me, hold me accountable to things that I had explicitly said that I would not take responsibility for (I only volunteered to be an interim "co-SUM"), and tell me that I was saying things about the council that weren't true. Amazingly, I came out "smelling like a rose" because they didn't have their facts right and they didn't even know what was written in their own documents, such as the line *requiring* all Service Unit team members to make a "family partnership" contribution (="FOS"). I decided to be gracious and serve out my term (I'd already announced to my SU that I would not continue the next year anyway). But I might have quit GS altogether, if the supervisor had not backed down (the other staff person was still sputtering that I HAD to be responsible for recruitment at every school in my area!). I just don't need to take that kind of abuse for working so hard to do a volunteer job. And they were abusing another GS leader for an entirely different reason, so his troop parents (male, no typo) were investigating their options to take their unit to another youth organization or create their own organization.

 

So I suppose I am hypersensitive and expecting the worse when it comes to dealing with scouting council staff. Thanks for giving me an outside perspective.