District Merger Chapter Merger

[JosephMD]

Well, after years of talk, speculatoin, and rumor.  My district is combining with the district to the south to make a single county wide district.  Chapters, well, merging by default.

 

History, the districts were once one, the Francis Scott Key district, witht he boundries of our county, Frederick County Maryland.  In 2003 they were split north and south, right through the middle of the county seat, to make the Catoctin Mountain (north) and Appalachian Trail (south) districts.  What's old is new again, as the combined district and chapter will be called Francis Scott Key.

 

Looking forward to the new chapter.  The scouts should be better able to staff their committees and teams.  They'll have to figure out who's chief, co-chief, or whatever.  For practical purposes, the merger is effective right away, budget and paperwork, January 1, and they don't have chapter elections scheduled until April. 

 

 

 

[Hedgehog]

Our Council dissolved back in 2015 and our district merged into a nearby Council.  The chapters merged also.  Although I wasn't in OA at the time, the comment I heard was that the youth Arrowman leadership were better at navigating the merger than the adults leading the districts and council.

[Eagle94-A1]

I've seen mergers, and I've seen splits.

 

With one merger, youth took it well, but we still had some issues due to geography. Because of the Mississippi River and its bridges, at one point folks had to go out of the council's boundaries to get to the meeting place. Adults did have some issues, especially when it came time to nominating folks for the District Award of Merit and other local awards.

 

With a second district merger, contrary to the way things are suppose to be, the two OA chapters did NOT (emphasis) merge. Yes, one district had 2 OA chapters. Eventually the district split in two a few years later. 

 

At one point I was in a newly reformed district that still had a merged OA chapter. it took about 2 years after the district separation to get 2 different chapter going. 

[Oldscout448]

Well Eagle 94, the chapters never totally split. They were so small they just couldn't survive on their own. You can imagine how fast they burn out when the scout who is chief as also running the elections, and is on the ceremonies team,(because if he's not they only have three members ( and is the ordeal master. So the two chapters still had joint ordeals every spring the southern team came up to help out and every fall the northern team went down to return the favor.

 

Still it going to be a very interesting few months.