Selling off Girl Scout Camps

[Pack18Alex 92]

I wish my Council would sell the camps. They are pushing to have all activities at a BSA Campsite... makes sense, they want the money to flow into BSA's facility coffers and not to the parks service. HOWEVER, there are limited "good weekends" and sometimes they are pushing us to move our weekends to accommodate. Two districts need to do a function the same weekend, and they pushed our Cub event off a week, where it will run smack into Passover (the weekend before, which takes my Unit out) and Palm Sunday (which will take out a Catholic Unit or two)... so to prevent us from returning to the Park we used when the BSA Site was being renovated, they are going to trash this awesome event.

 

Camping at a Park costs us $4/person/night, camping at a BSA Campground is $7.50/person/night. The BSA has more useful bathrooms for us (individual bathrooms, wash areas, etc), but the Parks have more facilities, shade trees, playgrounds (for younger siblings), nature trails throughout the park.

 

Down here, the Parks are cheap to use because the Taxpayers subsidize it and keep it cheap for "youth groups." I don't really get the point of BSA Campsites. A lot of money to maintain, so expensive to use. I get a few High Adventure places for olders Scouts, specialty sites like Camp Sawyer in the Keys (a primitive campsite in the Keys is really cool), places that can run Resident Camp all summer, etc. I get that. I also get the "Cub World" type locations which are awesome for getting Cubs excited.

 

I don't get maintaining these locations all over the country when National/State/County/City Parks could server the purpose for normal overnighters.

 

Clean up the balance sheet, consolidate Councils, more districts that are closer to the action, and recruiting/public relations help would be nice. Campgrounds? Only in areas that need them.

I'm plenty involved in Council/District level committees. I'm mostly here venting, I'm normally a positive person, a pile of scheduling messes and budgets fell on me.

 

The biggest issue is the conflict between the Camping Program "put all Council events at Camp Elmore" and the Activities Committees... Basically, there are not as many conflict-free weekends as you think... Our heavy camping season starts in January (the weather gets good in November/December, but holidays screw them up) and runs until March (we're stretching into April this year). Between Easter, Passover, Spring Break, etc., you really do start to run out of weekends to do EVERYTHING.

 

So as a result, my District Cuboree might get actually trashed. Basically, it got moved back because of other events (and to accommodate my Pack), but the weekend we want is booked by a different district. We'd happily move it back to the County Park we were at last year, but Council wants ALL events at Council properties, trying to plug its financial hole. The weekend we're pushed to happens to be the weekend before Passover (which will essentially exclude my Jewish Unit) and Palm Sunday (which will essentially exclude the Catholic Units). Cuboree was a HUGE hit last year, and has momentum to be good, but our Council's short sighted policy may destroy it just as its getting going.

 

Similarly, I'm working on planning a major Jewish Committee event. To include the Orthodox/UltraOrthodox Units, we picked a long weekend so we could use Sunday/Monday for activities. This happens to be one of the few good and open meetings, and the local JCC just scheduled their big January event that Sunday. It happens to be at a Park with a Campground (and last year, the Jewish Committee happened to use that particular park). So if it wasn't for the Elmore-only rule/push, we'd relocate to the Park where the JCC event is and just kind of have things staffed accordingly so we could use it for recruiting.

 

So while I think it's great that we have these council properties, it's an albatross when it becomes a requirement, when sometimes extenuating circumstances warrant moving elsewhere.