National Permits

[eagle90]

As we all know by now, the BSA can do no wrong according to Bob, no matter what evidence there is to the contrary. I again talked to the Regional Office and was told they will get to the permits next week. They received the permit April 10th, and according to the woman I spoke to, all is in order. I offered to drive out there today and get it, but that was not possible I was told. How many people who aren't on this forum are having the same problem? Get your head out of the sand Bob. This is NOT a volunteer problem, and no amount of training will fix it.

[Bob White]

Gern,

There have not been "several" complaints in this thread. There were three, that's all just three. You are just making a mountain out of a molehill. All you have so far is 3 units who had a problem out of thousands. This is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth for nothing.

 

Eagle 90 your personal attacks do nothing to further the discussion or to show your knowledge or ability to discuss the topic ratonally. You should be able to discuss the topic and not the individual posters. One would have to assume that without any substantive information to share you chose instead to just attack me.

 

How many people who aren't on this forum are having the same problem...You haven't the slightest idea so why do you assume it is nmore rather than less?

[Lisabob]

Ha, LOL Bob. Wife? yes. Old? I don't think so, not yet anyway!

 

Believe what you want, makes no difference to me.

 

[GernBlansten]

Oh boy, now you are making me relive some of my statistics training I took about 20 + years ago.

Lets talk about our sample size. Total population is 2100 units in the central region. Total number of units reporting results in this thread in the central region, 3. Total number of units report issues with timely national tour permits, 3. 100% failure rate at our sample size, admittedly small, but nonetheless significant.

 

If I were in the aerospace industry, which I am, doing quality control, which I have done, if out of a small sample I find a large percentage of defects, it warrants an investigation.

 

Eagle90, I feel for ya. I know the stress involved in organizing and executing a high adventure. A non-responsive BSA doesn't help. You have many balls in the air and this shouldn't be one of them.

[Bob White]

All you proved is that the forum is not a good sampler for accurate statistics and I agree. You have not proven that this is a problem of any size or that the three individual incidents are indicative of a regular occurrence.

 

You guys use terms like many, sevral, and multiple. You got three incidents and that's all. You are blowwing three incidents into some huge problem and you have nothing to to prove it with.

[FScouter]

Statistics is fun. And it is scientific, and valid conclusions can be proven using statistics. But, you have to have a real sample from the population of 2100. You get the sample by looking at a few of the 2100 and see if they had a problem or if they didn't. No fair looking only at the bad ones and calling it a sample. Bob could easily find a 3 or 6 or 10 troops that had no problem, but that proves nothing either. Pick a dozen or so random tour permits and see how long the approval time was. That's a sample.

[Ohio_Scouter]

Well, count me in and let's make it 4 now. Any other takers from Central region?

[Stosh]

I'm thinking that the pool of incidents is far greater than the number suggested by BW. My crew operates almost completely outside of the council so I have in a year's time a lot more than 3 national permits going on at any one time. Our activity schedule is finalized in Jan-Feb and IMMEDIATELY our national permits are submitted for the whole year. If we are extremely lucky we might get half of them on time. We are lucky to be a crew with separate insurance because when we don't have a permit, we notify the council as such and go anyway. They have gone through this problem with Central Region so many times our adopted process has become routine. The gal at the council office rolls her eyes when I bring in my permits all at once because she knows it's going to be a huge mess for her over the course of the next 9 months.

 

I don't know exactly how many permits I can offer to the pool of statistics here, but I've gone through this process with my one unit with at least 5 national permits per year, if not more over the course of the past 10 years. That means that I can assure you that only one of them have ever been processed in less than 2 months time and that was because we were going to go half way across the country for an event and the council gal pulled off a miracle to get it done quickly. That's not counting the double filing of applications that have been "lost" by Central Region either. The record for them is losing the same application twice. I am but one unit in this council and from the comments by council office, I am not the only one that has this problem.

 

So maybe statistics can be skewed in a variety of different ways, but if BSA is going to require these permits to be filed, they have to make sure they can handle them in a far better way than what is being done by at least one region.

 

Stosh

[eagle90]

Well after another call to the Central Region, I finally got them to fax the permit to our council office and had to drive to pick it up. There were no changes, no questions. It just took 118 days to approve. Now if our flights are on time, all will be good!

[AK-Eagle]

Eagle90

 

1I'm just hoping you did not make your travel arrangements through Central Region as well

Have a great time, Stay safe

 

AK-Eagle

[Stosh]

Well, the nice part of the whole thing is: no matter where you are going or what you are going to be doing, the most difficult and challenging part of the trip is over now that you have the permit in hand. Have a great trip!

 

Stosh

[GernBlansten]

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

Friedrich Nietzsche

[mmhardy]

My troop is going to Seabase on August 14th. We submitted our National Tour Permit to Council April 7th and they sent it in to CENTRAL REGION the same week. Thats 120 days proir to our adventure!

 

I look in the mail everyday.

 

Its the only open item in our planning.

[Stosh]

Hmmm, did you say Central Region? Welcome to the "Wait-N-See" Club.

 

Go immediately to your council office and have them call Central Region to make sure they haven't lost it. You need to be proactive on this. Resubmit it with a high priority, gotta have it now memo attached and have your council call them every other day until you have it in your hands. I'm hoping you have at least a couple more weeks to make sure you get it before you leave. Otherwise have your council people instruct CR to send the permit to SeaBase directly. That way when you get to SeaBase, they can call CR and ask where the permit went too. And please don't think this advice is farfetched. Been there, done that too many times.

 

Stosh(This message has been edited by jblake47)

[mmhardy]

Actually I "social engineered" my way to the person at CR who has our orginal copy of our permit. They were nice, and assured me that a copy would be in my hand this next week. I'm confident that this will come through. God help them if it does not...I have direct numbers at CR and cell phones too!

 

Bob White, God Bless you. It may be a mole hill to you but to our unit it's $33,600 of hard invested cash that has went into this trip. At this point the the whole effort should not hinge in a 8 1/2 x 14 sheet of paper. CR has a real problem and it has real $$ behind it.