RE: [Philmont]: Philmont Council contingents [opposing views]

OK we won the Lottery but now are having trouble filling the spots and
we have paid a lot on the deposite.
1) Can we get our money back and give up the spot?
2) Is there a contact list of those wanting a spot that could repay us
and take our spot?

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-philmont@troop47.com [mailto:owner-philmont@troop47.com] On
Behalf Of Jack Thornton
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 10:21 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list philmont
Subject: [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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loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
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Received on Thu Nov 17 19:45:35 2005