Getting out of the camping business

[CNYScouter]

There has been some heated discussion in my council over the selling of some of our councils property, one of our summer camps in particular.

 

Over the last 5 years or so we have seen a drop from 8100 to 5900 registered Scouts in the council.

In this time frame the council has also amassed a debt of over $400,000.

 

Last week there was an informational meeting about the selling of the property and the measures that the council was going to take.

 

I couldnt make the meeting but I just saw on our local forum a persons view of the meeting that went.

He said there were about 20 people there plus council reps.

 

However there was one thing in his posting that really bothered me:

 

Finally someone suggested we should get out of the camping business altogether. This seemed to meet with some approval.

 

I know my council is facing tough times but I am really beginning to wonder whats going on here and when I read something like this.

 

P.S. I also see in another posting that our executive board has decided not to sell the camp.

 

[scoutingagain]

"Finally someone suggested we should get out of the camping business altogether. This seemed to meet with some approval. "

 

Sounds like someone is looking at the situation from a very pragmatic, free market perspective. If in fact, membership in your council has dropped as you say, and there are other council camps available for scouts in your council to take advantage of, and their numbers are also dropping, at some point it becomes uneconomical to keep all those camps open, serving an insufficient number of campers to pay for themselves. (I might say the same thing about Scout Executives.) Some will need to shut down, be sold or whatever so that others may succeed.

 

The cold hand of the free market, doesn't care how many generations of scouts spent summers at ye olde council camp. It only cares about how many are camping now and are expected to in the future. As we continue to lose membership, it may come to the point where not all councils can afford to operate a council camp, and some may find they can support their scouts better by "getting out of the camping business", not necessarily getting out of scouts & camping.

 

SA

 

 

[LongHaul]

For about 10 years the direction from National has been that We dont belong in the real-estate business. You wont find this in print but if you look at the trend across the country the liquidation of property has been the front line solution to the drop in enrollment. With the push on the Learning for Life program in 1990, National has once again begun an effort to take the out out of Scouting. This was tried in the mid 1970s and was met with large drops in enrollment. The LFL program is supposed to counter this switch in demographics. Think about the issue from a different perspective. If National could manage to drop camping and outdoor high adventure from the program what would their overhead become? By that I mean where is the money going? If the program was, as it is with LFL, totally up to the individual CO to produce using a set of National guidelines what would Nationals financial obligation become? National sees Scouting as a business ahead of seeing it as a way of life, or a mind set.

 

Being from the Chicago Area Council this trend has special impact for me and my troop. Our Council SE has managed to sell all of our remaining Camps. I say it was the SE that managed this because of the manner in which this was done; it was an orchestrated plan from day one. Even with 17 million dollars in the bank efforts to sell the one remaining camp were highlighted. Its not about financial accountability or responsibility it is about dollars in the bank under the control of National. As evidence of this I would like to point out that when the plan to sell was uncovered efforts were made by the CORs and the MAL to change the make up of the Executive Board. These efforts were met with all the political finesse Chicago is famous for. Voting on resolutions were rigged, bylaws were rewritten summarily by the Executive Board, essentially giving the sitting members of the board the power to re-elect themselves in perpetuity. When legal proceedings were started by concerned CORs and volunteers the courts held that the Executive Board acted illegally. At this point National stepped in and announced that unless the civil cases were immediately dropped, National would dissolve the Chicago Area Council and assume control of all its assets.

The only way to resist this trend is to encourage every voting member of the Council to use their vote to seat people on the Council Boards who reflect the attitudes of the COs and MAL. CNYScouter says that the executive board has decided not to sell the camp, great news. Solutions to declining registration must be recruitment, solutions to falling attendance at summer camps must be promotion and possibly advertising. When I was a scout in the 1960s Chicago Area Council had 6 local camps, within 40 miles of metro Chicago, and owned 10,000 acres in Michigan on which it operated as many as 8 summer camps at one time. The camps are gone and so is the money, our last two camps are sold and when the money from those sales are gone?

LongHaul

(This message has been edited by LongHaul)

[nldscout]

CNY,

First I was at the meeting and the one in watertown.

 

Second, I was the someone who made the suggestion. However let me tell you the whole suggestion. In the area of central NY there are many good Scout summer camps. At present the one that has the highest percentage of attendance just made 80%. Our large camp, Sabattus was only at 65%, as were many of the other camps in the area. A lot of councils in NY are barely holding thier own and constantly juggling to stay afloat. The operation of our camps year round last year cost over 100K more than they brought in.

 

Sabattus while a fine camp is only used 6 weeks a year, and there is no prospect of improving that due to great distance, remote location and inaccesability during the winter. The plan was to spend up to $2,000,000.00 to build a new dining hall and add to camp. This camp is only a patrol cooking camp at present.

 

So my rational was with the excess number of camping spaces in the immediate area, coupled with the remote, inaccesable location of this camp is it worth the 2 million plus they want to put into it? Before we spend that kind of money we should be absolutly 150% positive that this is a smart move.

 

Ladies and Gentleman, like it or not BSA Councils have tons of property, a lot of it way underutilized and in some cases sucking the money and resources out of councils that could present better programs if the emotion of closing a camp was taken out of the picture and you looked at the best use of resousces.

 

So I stick with my suggestion that maybe we should be the smart one and save our resources and close our summer camp program. Keeping smaller year round facilities.

[Gonzo1]

AAAHHHhhh, I miss Chicago "machine" politics. Who would have guessed that the BSA would stoop to such attempts, but hey, vote early, and vote often. And remember, in Chaicago, the dead have as much right to vote as the next guy.

 

Maybe we could in fact take the 'out' out of scouting when referring to National, and use "Boy Sc s of America" instead.

 

 

[John-in-KC]

Lots of issues here, and as always, we don't know the whole truth. CNYScouter is a reliable person, but we're getting his "precis" of the issue.

 

Looks to me like issues involve FOS (family and community), council endowment, council properties endowment (if any), United Way support, and recruitment of youth.

 

If you don't ATTRACT/RETAIN the kids at Cubs and ATTRACT/RETAIN them into Boy Scouting and beyond, then there is little justification in retaining camps!

 

OTOH, if the Council has multiple properties, and there isn't the internal demand for property use, it has several alternatives:

 

1) Increase usage, including non-BSA activities

 

2) Relook the facility: If fully developed, does it really need to be so? Is there a greater need to demolish the infrastructure and let the property revert to nature? Both of our Council properties have extensive conservation management plans that are now in place.

 

3) Do nothing, which doesn't help the deficit.

 

4) Sell off the properties, which yes, is a one time infusion of capital, but ALSO (depending on the year round costs of the property) reduces Council annual budget by:

- Cost of Ranger and maintenance staff

- Cost of Full-Time Reservation Director (I'm in a 300 series Council, CNYS may have a DE doing program in the summer, so possibly no savings)

- Repairs and routine maintenance of the property itself and the equipment on the property (water/sewer, dining halls, staff village, lakefront boats, ad infinitum).

 

If I were a voting member of this Council, I'd be looking holistically at the entire operations and maintenance cycle of the Council budget, not just one property.(This message has been edited by John-in-KC)

[Fuzzy Bear]

I once was in a Council in Texas with 5 camps. Selling any of the 5 was not acceptable but they sold the lesser one which still felt like they had gutted us of one great camp. I still think of it. I realize it was landlocked but it had facilities, which nobody comes by easily.

 

I am now in a Council with two camps, both are a long drive. I haven't camped at either one but when we want Day Camp or Camporee camping or Cub Adventure camping or any number of kinds of camping, we don't go. It is a shame not to have something because this area should have hundreds of places to go. It is a problem every single time.

 

The good thing is we get to know people with property and then we get to know the people with the tractors and brush hogs and then we rent big dumpsters and large numbers of port-o-potties, then we cart in large amounts of wood, food and cooking gear and all kinds of program things. Well, there has to be trade offs for an area that has one of the best recruitment programs in the country with one of the best FOS campaigns and a place with lots of wealth. I think I can see where our leadership is coming from and where we are going. I think. fb

 

[Eamonn]

About ten years ago a few of us were building a new Campmaster building at the only camp that our Council owns.

As ever when a group of Scouter's gather we were voicing our opinions.

At that time stocks were doing well, the deficit wasn't. All in all things were going good. I remember one little old Lady telling me she was making more money than she could spent!

One of the guys working on the building, said that he thought that the days of the small Council were numbered. He went on to say that if we were having a tough time making it when times were good, that we were in for a terrible time when times got rough.

It seems that the rough tough times are upon us.

I really like our little Council. I like the fact that if I try really hard I can just about name the SM of every Troop in the Council -All 92 of them.

No change that there is more than 92, but the Scoutreach Troops are led by a "Paid Volunteer"

We have the site we own and a site we lease from the State in a State Park. I can drive to the one we own in less than 20 minutes and to the the one in the state park in 28 minutes. I can also drive to the two sites that Greater Pittsburgh owns and operates in a very short time and a couple that Penns Woods Council operates in less than a hour.

While some people love the big camp that GPC operates (Heritage Scout Reservation ) I really like the smaller one they own Twin Echos, it's great in the winter.

Where I live it's very rural, many of the Scouts live on farms. I have about 70 acres next to me that isn't used for very much. I could easily accommodate several hundred Scouts if they just wanted to camp. Sure they would have to use porta-potties and there would be no dining hall, no swimming pool (The local pool is 5 mins down the road)

I kinda think we have to ask what do we want from a camp?

Is what we want or expect from the camp linked to what we want or expect from the Council?

I have very fond and deep memories of my time at Camp Conestoga in the Laurel Hill State Park. It was what brought me to the USA in the first place, it's where I met Her Who Must Be Obeyed and I have spent many happy times up at the camp.

I know these are all very important to me, but somehow I think if I were a Scout the idea of speeding across the lake in a power boat at Heritage Scout reservation might sound more appealing.

Maybe each of the different Scout Council Camp site in a given area should look at just offering so many different merit badges

Greater Pitt could offer all the ones that start with the letters A, B, T AND S, We could offer the E's,C's and H's -But then again maybe not.

Eamonn.