Council Mergers/Reductions Post Bankruptcy

[Tron]

Council Service Territory maps were updated last night. It's not clear which councils merged but it looks like at least 1 council in California is merged out and 1 council in Pennsylvania or New Jersey is merged out as well. 

[InquisitiveScouter]

28 minutes ago, Tron said:

Council Service Territory maps were updated last night. It's not clear which councils merged but it looks like at least 1 council in California is merged out and 1 council in Pennsylvania or New Jersey is merged out as well. 

https://www.scouting.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/11-21-2025-Council-Service-Territories-Map-with-HQs.pdf

[Jameson76]

4 hours ago, Tron said:

Council Service Territory maps were updated last night. It's not clear which councils merged but it looks like at least 1 council in California is merged out and 1 council in Pennsylvania or New Jersey is merged out as well. 

Still show 234 councils, which means about 4,200 youth participants per council.  The excessive overhead costs continue.

Assuming a SE costs $200K (all in salary and benefits) that means each youth registered pays +/- $48 just for the SE overhead.  

 

[Tron]

17 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

Still show 234 councils, which means about 4,200 youth participants per council.  The excessive overhead costs continue.

Assuming a SE costs $200K (all in salary and benefits) that means each youth registered pays +/- $48 just for the SE overhead.  

 

Yeah I am not sure if that number is accurate (not your fault, nationals lack of transparency). My understanding is that a lot of councils do not have SE right now. I know that in my CST there are 5 without an SE right now, two have not had an SE since 2024. I think you assumption on salary is correct (barring some outliers). I work in "captain business land" and if I were at national I would literally just announce and start forcing the plan to merge down to 1 council per state. I was looking at what they did in Michigan and it doesn't look perfect to me but it certainly is a great start to the overhead problem. My council is cutting headcount right now, we're supposedly negotiating "shared services" asset pooling, and cost sharing with surrounding councils. I wish they would just rip the band-aid off and just tell us which new CSP to buy 😛

[InquisitiveScouter]

23 minutes ago, Tron said:

Yeah I am not sure if that number is accurate (not your fault, nationals lack of transparency). My understanding is that a lot of councils do not have SE right now. I know that in my CST there are 5 without an SE right now, two have not had an SE since 2024. I think you assumption on salary is correct (barring some outliers). I work in "captain business land" and if I were at national I would literally just announce and start forcing the plan to merge down to 1 council per state. I was looking at what they did in Michigan and it doesn't look perfect to me but it certainly is a great start to the overhead problem. My council is cutting headcount right now, we're supposedly negotiating "shared services" asset pooling, and cost sharing with surrounding councils. I wish they would just rip the band-aid off and just tell us which new CSP to buy 😛

Wish we would go back to these:

Those would never change.  (Well, almost never...)

Edited 2 hours ago by InquisitiveScouter

[Eagle94-A1]

Challenge with that is each council is supposedly their own, independent, legal entity. All national can do is withhold charters if memory serves.

[fred8033]

1 hour ago, Tron said:

... if I were at national I would literally just announce and start forcing the plan to merge down to 1 council per state. I was looking at what they did in Michigan and it doesn't look perfect to me but it certainly is a great start to the overhead problem. ...

100% agree.  ... Could have some adjustments such as Dakotas could be one council to save cost.  Or Dakotas + Nebraska.  ... Or one per state to keep it simple.

[Tron]

1 hour ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Challenge with that is each council is supposedly their own, independent, legal entity. All national can do is withhold charters if memory serves.

Yes correct. I think the answer is national needs to start telling the councils that are not meeting their charter agreement that they are not getter recharter.