Staten Island’s Boy/Cub Scouts scout for food | SILive.com

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — With local food pantries nearly bare, the Staten Island Boy Scouts of America are stepping up efforts to restock the shelves to help their less fortunate neighbors.

Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of America took to the streets Saturday in uniform to solicit donations from shoppers at six Staten Island grocery store locations to benefit Islanders who rely on Project Hospitality’s food pantry.

That’s the headline from a recent article in the Staten Island Advance on the ongoing story on Camp Pouch.

The cash-strapped Greater New York Councils of the Boy Scouts of America continues to seek a solution for the camp, after announcing in 2009 it might have to sell the property absent a $30 million conservation easement from the city.

Although a spokesman for the Boy Scouts could not give a specific time line yesterday on the fate the camp, he confirmed that the organization is actively pursuing its options, including selling off a portion of the camp or looking to public and private sources to help make the easement a reality.

Read the full article at the link above.

• Registration & Detail:  www.TimesSquareJamboree.com
• Casting Call:  www.bsa-gnyc.org/CastingCall and Facebook
• Identify & reach out to highly talented youth Scouts – have them audition for roles in the stage show.

Additional information is available by writing to:

The Times Square Jamboree Team

TimesSquareJamboree@gmail.com

Discussions to save Pouch Camp in the Greenbelt are under way and involve surprising potential saviors: A luxury home builder and the Richmond County Country Club; and possibly the New York Container Terminal.

In an attempt to prevent the Greater New York Councils of Boy Scouts from selling off the 120-acre camp to a private developer, the two separate fund-raising possibilities that are emerging would allow other commercial or residential development to take place.

…

“There has been no decision made on this proposal or any other proposal. We were asked to look at it and we are looking it,” Cusick noted. “The goal here is, ultimately, to save Pouch Camp and to keep it as pristine open space…. We have to listen and entertain any proposal that comes across our desk.”

See the article for more details.

Citing financial turmoil, the Boy Scouts of America is exploring the full or partial sale of Pouch Camp.

The GNYC press release goes on to state…

with ongoing efforts to secure a conservation easement the preferred arrangement for Scouts and the community. The camp is one of only two key assets that can be strategically
leveraged to ensure the Council’s financial stability, as necessitated by steep declines in corporate and community funding amid rising operational and outreach costs.

So while a conservation easement would be the ideal (Where NYC or NYS pays the Scouts to keep the land undeveloped) there is no guarantee that this would be the outcome.

There was also a rally to save Camp Pouch on December 12:

In an attempt to prevent a beloved piece of Island history from falling into the clutches of private developers, approximately 1,500 Scouts and supporters of William H. Pouch Scout Camp braved the cold yesterday evening to rally against the potential sale of the Sea View site.

A FaceBook page has also been created to Save Camp Pouch.

The Boy Scout Jamboree won’t be coming to Goshen Pass in Rockbridge County.

Jack Furst, a member of the Boy Scouts of America board who is heading the search for a new site for the annual gathering for over 200,000 scouts and volunteers, said Tuesday that the Goshen Scout Reservation was crossed off the list because of “a wide variety of issues.”

The Goshen site topped a list of 80 studied by BSA in 28 states. Development of the site would have taken years, and ultimately create 80 full-time and 1,200 seasonal jobs and cost $100 million to $250 million.

Does this put TMR back in the running?