[Philmont]: Philmont Council contingents [opposing views]

Jim,

Let me see if I understand your points exactly.

1. Concil contingents are around because they get
many scouts to Philmont.

2. The number of participants a council gets can vary
year to year, but getting significantly more slots
year over year is difficult.

3. By moving a troop contingent into a council
contingent and vacating your spot in the waiting list
you make it more likely that somebody else gets a shot
at going.

4. A council contingent can provide resources and
help with logistics for units who may have the
interest in going, but not the leadership with the
skills to handle the logistics.

That seems reasonable, yet I still can't quite come to
your point of view, and I'll try to address the parts
that bother me point by point.

1. Unit contingents also get many scouts to Philmont.
2. The 'Use it or lose it' setup has never sat well
with me. It encourages waste instead of thrift. For
example, when talking about the federal government and
their budget - you have departments every year buying
things they don't need at the end of the year so that
their budget doesn't get cut for the next year.

In this case, it may be taking second and third timers
to fill slots. Yet, if the spaces [contingents] were
freed up for unit contingents, you would likely see
more first-timers going instead. This isn't something
councils can do anything about, and it is natural to
play for the most advantage possible according to the
rules.

3. Moving your unit crew to the council contingent
does effectively move-up the crews behind yours in the
waiting list. But isn't it like cutting ahead of
those ahead of you on the waiting list?

Now, these numbers are out of thin air, as the only
time I've done Philmont we weren't on the waiting
list. Imagine that you are number 250 on the waiting
list. Due to cancellations, the first 175 crews on
the list will get to go. By you joining the council
contingent, you get to go when you would not have. It
also means that one fewer crew on the waiting list
gets to go. So, effectively, number 250 gets to go
when 176 does not - skipping ahead of 75 crews.

With there being over 300 councils, if only half the
councils do that with 1 crew, that is a good number of
units that get pre-empted.

4. This is the second best argument for council
contingents (the first being that they allow boys from
multiple units go who couldn't otherwise). Yet, even
this falls short in my mind. Unit leaders who don't
have the skills to coordinate a cross-country trip AND
REALIZE IT (not much can be done if they don't) should
be able to turn to their support
(Council/District/UC/etc.) to find a way to get it
done. If that support and those resources don't
exist, there is a bigger problem.

5. What do I think should be done instead? I don't
want to see council contingents done away with - when
they do combine boys from multiple units that would
not otherwise have even the chance of going, council
contingents are a golden resource.

I would like to see there not to be a penalty for not
using spaces for unit crews (I hope that sentence
makes sense). A one year drop should not cause
problems for the future. This however, is an issue
that has to be handled at the Philmont side and not
the individual councils.

Instead, it would be nice if there was a way to help
ensure that as many crews as possible are at 12 -
through a process at the council level of pairing boys
with other units that don't have full crews.

Respectfully,

Jack
--- Troop 6 Scoutmaster
<troop6scoutmaster@comcast.net> wrote:

> Jack, I'll disagree. Council contingents are about
> getting scouts to
> Philmont (or NT or DH or ...) period.
<snip>
> significant upward changes are difficult. If a
> council has a dry year or
> two it can take years for them to recover.
<snip>
> A council is loath
> to take their numbers down and so will lobby troops
> on the waiting list, or
> even that have won lottery positions, to consider
> going with the council
> contingent to make their numbers. In the end this
> helps move the waiting
> list along. In our case, we participated in the
> lottery, got a number low
> enough on the waiting list to give us hope, but
> large enough to make the
> trip unlikely. In the end going with our council
> solved a problem for them,
> got us to the ranch and freed up a slot on the list
> for the next guys who
> might just get a shot. Ideally a successful council
> HA committee would end
> up sending their number with nobody left on the
> waiting list, a difficult
> outcome.
>
<snip>
> YIS
>
> Jim
> SM T6
> PSR '74, '04 & '06

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Received on Thu Nov 17 12:41:33 2005