slocumscout

The only citizenship requirement I see is for adults outside the US. From the requirements section of the adult application: "Reside within the USA or a U.S. territory, or be a U.S. citizen residing outside the USA." https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/524-501.pdf

If I were a betting man, I'd say the unit numbers are most likely 34, with 84 as a slim second possibility. That first number has two "lobes", and the top lobe is rounded. If you look at unit number patches from that era, you'll see that the '3' has just a small indent between top and bottom lobes, and the '8' goes much deeper. Your photo shows a small indent. What I can't tell from the pictures is if there's a third digit to the number (where they are relative to the community strip makes me think there could be, but I really can't tell for sure.) Cub Scout uniforms didn't differentiate between Wolf, Bear, and Webelos in that time frame (I was a Cub in the 1970s, and that was still true then.) Webelos did have a different (plaid) neckerchief and slide when I was a Webelos, but I don't remember if that was true in the late '60s, and my copies of Mitch Reis' books on dating Scouting uniforms are on loan to a friend right now.

There's been a lot of concern in recent years about hidden recording equipment like this, in a lot of different spaces (most of what I've seen in the last few years has focused on things like AirBnB rentals, motels, and the like.) There are quite a few YouTube "how to screen your room for devices" videos; no idea how effective any of them are. Many of them call for specialized devices (either to spot the IR illumination that some of them are paired with or the wireless signal they send out.) When I was building my house (this was circa 2000) I used to get a lot of home automation catalogs in the mail, since I was putting network cabling in the walls to try to future-proof a bit. Nearly all of those catalogs had hidden camera devices ostensibly aimed at "home security", ranging from do-it-yourself board cameras to clock radios to smoke detectors to stuffed animals to exit signs, all with embedded wireless cameras. From the product photos, it sure looked like you'd have a hard time noticing anything odd about them. The electronics just keep getting smaller, so the devices you're trying to find are tiny, low power, and require minuscule (often sub-1mm) hole to "see" through, so they'd presumably be very hard to spot in anything that already has a reason to be connected to a power source. You'd probably have better luck finding the thing receiving and recording the wireless signal, although even that could be small these days (think about how small a Roku or FireTV stick is) and with many camps being connected to the internet, the recorder is possibly not even on-site. Given all that, I don't know how effective a training for unit leaders might be. A better bet might be trainings for rangers and/or campmasters to inspect facilities that could be targeted like this before use; the assumption would be that they know what's supposed to be there and could spot suspicious additions or changes.

Periscope Film over on YouTube has a playlist of Scouting-related films and PSAs from the 1920s until the 1990s that they've been digitizing with an eye towards preservation (they got their start archiving a lot of old military-related, government-produced films, but they've expanded into a stock footage house that specializes in archival films.)

As I understood things, the property contributions listed are only for properties that have been promised to the settlement trust; in other words, they are still to be sold. For Councils that have already sold properties (including mine) to settle their contribution, the proceeds of those sales will represent part or all of the listed cash contributions. To pick a random case that isn't my own council, Three Fires Council sold Camp Freeland Leslie after its 2021 season, and stated that was to pay their contribution to the trust. They show only a cash contribution and not a property contribution.

Most of the issues I've seen recently have either been issues with timeliness (for example, patches or awards for event participants that were ordered far too late to actually be presented at the event) or quantity. Quantity has been a recurring issue spanning multiple DEs: we have some volunteers that offer to run the warming stations at winter events (basically, a warm building with coffee/hot cocoa/snacks.) Those volunteers know how much they should have on hand given the attendee count, and the quantities that end up being purchased are always lower than what was requested (or missing, like no sweeteners or creamer to go with coffee; or in some cases the wrong items entirely), requiring someone to run out mid-event to resupply. The proper amounts were always budgeted for in the event budget; that didn't seem to matter. Finally got to the point where the volunteers would just purchase and donate the required supplies out of frustration, because they wanted to be sure that a kid who came in to warm up and get some hot cocoa actually got some. It all seems to stem from who puts their hands on the money. In nearly all of the cases, volunteers were more than willing to actually handle the purchasing and seek reimbursement, even within a given budget, but the insistence from professionals was that they handle the purchasing directly. They've even been reluctant to shop with a volunteer in tow. I know that with the current membership situation and the council payments to the bankruptcy settlement that the money situation is challenging, but when you're charging event attendees an amount that covers the budgeted items, you give them what they're paying for.

Some information on the replica of Lady Liberty in Fall River, MA is here: https://www.cachalotalumni.org/cachaletter/2020/fall.pdf

Narragansett Council updated their information page on the sale of Camp Cachalot, which has been sold to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and will cease operating as a Scout camp on May 31, 2022: http://www.narragansettbsa.org/about-us/scouting-news/camp-sale/74646

All of the camps in Rhode Island have been leased for as far back as I can remember. They're owned by RIBS (Rhode Island Boy Scouts), one of the early organizations that merged with the BSA but continue to exist as the entity that owns those camps. Narragansett Council doesn't own any of them (there is a lot of cross-fertilization between the boards of RIBS and the council, but they are legally distinct entities.) So, there's a lot of precedent there, and yes, NCAP applies.

Since I don't see it mentioned yet, the Narragansett Council is selling Camp Cachalot in Plymouth, MA: http://www.narragansettbsa.org/campsale That's from August; the council recently canceled camping reservations after June 1 with a message to the units who had reservations that it was due to the pending sale, so it sounds like an agreement with the Commonwealth was reached. The understanding among volunteers is that the organization Camp Norse is being sold to is RIBS (the Rhode Island Boy Scouts), which owns the other properties mentioned and leases them to the council, and that RIBS will need to sell between one and four properties to raise the funds to purchase Camp Norse, but so far no one knows which other camps might be sold. The general assumption is that Yawgoog, Norse, and Champlin are safe from sale, as that's where the council is focusing program, but that any of the other properties could be at risk of sale. There is significant overlap between the RIBS board and past and current members of the Narragansett Council board.