Council Merger

[Scoutmaster Teddy]

The Greater Saint Louis Area Council and Lincoln Trails Council are merging.

 

https://stlbsa.org/blog/2018/09/27/st-louis-and-decatur-illinois-boy-scout-councils-approve-merger/

[LVAllen]

Is there a betting pool for the date on which the sale of the first camp is announced?

[qwazse]

They need to try harder if they want to compare to the gerrymander that comprises Laurel Highlands Council.

[ParkMan]

69,000 scouts - that's one big council

[fred johnson]

The new model is large councils.  The power of size is really hard to argue against.  Plus, add online training.  Add online advancement / scoutbook.  Add reduced corporate and family fundraising.   Scouts need less hand holding from councils.  The power of a larger council is hard to argue against. 

The only sad sad part is the council leaders will know proportionately fewer of the actual scouts.  

 

[T2Eagle]

I'm not familiar with either council, but Lincoln Trails scouts will represent just 3% of St. Louis council scouts, and 2100 scouts seems pretty small so this looks like an almost inevitable and logical move.

[eagle90]

Problem is they will get lost.  This happened to our council when merged with a much larger council.  We are the red headed step child.  Three camps were closed, and all leadership at the council level is from the big council.

[walk in the woods]

Second consoliation into GSLAC in two years.  I wonder why they consolidated with GSLAC instead of one of the three bordering councils in central Illinois.  Decatur is a long way from the bootheel of MO.

[gblotter]

No doubt there will be many more mergers/consolidations after the LDS exit next year. My own council is at risk with just three districts (already too small by some estimations). After the LDS exit, that will likely drop to two districts.

But size isn't everything - somehow, the tiny Piedmont California Council manages to survive and thrive.

 

Edited September 30, 2018 by gblotter

[carebear3895]

RIP Decatur. Merging with GSLAC is pretty much death to those small town Units 

[carebear3895]

looking at that map, I Imagine it won't be long before Abraham Lincoln Council goes too. 

[walk in the woods]

11 minutes ago, carebear3895 said:

RIP Decatur. Merging with GSLAC is pretty much death to those small town Units 

The good news is it might be even easier to ignore a council that's 2-3 hours of highway driving away......

If the Polaris project is looking for efficiencies, mega-councils would seem like a good idea on paper.  We already have the model in MI and I suspect we'll see something similar in UT, northern AZ, and southern ID.

[Setonfan]

Carebear, do you have any metrics to back that up?  There have been a number of mergers where program quality and service have increased when the infrastructures have been combined and duplicate services have been eliminated.  But, you may have more information than I do.

[wdfa89]

we were in the council that last merged w/ gslac (lewis and clark).  at the troop level I would be hard pressed to say there is a discernible impact beyond a changing council strips--especially for the boys.   I think any "conflict" has been at the adult scouter level and in that respect gslac is the daddy rabbit and they run the show--on the other hand a fair amount of dead weight imo was cleared out of the l&c side of the river.  and we now have better access to all of the programs/resources on the mo side.  there has not been a wholesale closing of camps.  i think one was tferred to the Y or some other non profit but that was in motion prior and made sense from an facility mx/upgrade & use perspective.  Even the OA hand wringing about shutting down our lodge has been staved off for the foreseeable future.

not saying this new merger is a good idea or will turn out same, but I reckon unless you are a wheel in the adult scouter system it will be fairly transparent.

[Bowline]

On 10/2/2018 at 10:33 AM, carebear3895 said:

RIP Decatur. Merging with GSLAC is pretty much death to those small town Units 

@carebear3895  I’m not tracking how a council merger relates to quote “death” to small town units.  The afore mentioned gslac merger last year has been fairly transparent to the old Lewis and Clark council.  Units will ebb and flow through time.