Boy Scouts rally for camps

by Zack Harold

Original Source @ Charleston Daily Mail

also at DavidMarchFleming.com

Many especially upset by plan to sell Buckskin reservation in Pocahontas

As the Buckskin Council looks to rid itself of three Boy Scout camps, community members, officials and former scouts are rallying to save the landmarks.

At a meeting of the Chief Cornstalk District last month, Michael Bledsoe, district commissioner, told attendees that Camp Chief Logan could be shut down.

Buckskin Council President Art King and executive scout Jeff Purdy were at the meeting to represent the council, which owns and operates the Logan County camp.

The council also runs the Buckskin Scout Reservation in Pocahontas County and Camp Roland, located about 20 miles outside Bluefield, near Bastian, Va.

Camp Chief Logan's proposed closure is among the Buckskin Council property task force's five recommendations to the council's executive board. The others are:

* Selling part or all of the Buckskin Scout Reservation in Pocahontas County.

* Creating nonprofit corporations to lease and operate Camp Chief Logan and Camp Roland near Bastian, Va.

* Logging part of the Logan County camp to boost the council's endowment and raise money for the camp's 501(c)3 corporation.

The recommendations are meant to fix the council's finances. King says the council has lost about $80,000 on the camps every year for several years.

Logan County Commission President Art Kirkendoll, and state House of Delegates members Greg Butcher, Jeff Eldridge and Ralph Rodighiero were at the meeting, and pledged to find money the council said it needed to keep Camp Chief Logan up and running.

Rodighiero, a former Boy Scout himself, said the Logan County camp accounts for about half of the Buckskin Council's $80,000-a-year loss. That $40,000, he says, pays the park ranger's salary.

"We're going to try to obtain half of it from Charleston, and the County Commission is also going to try to obtain matching funds," he said.

Each delegate is allowed to steer $67,000 in state funds each year to organizations in their communities. Rodighiero said he and the other delegates likely would pledge $6,000 or $7,000 each for the camp.

"If the problem was being able to pay the ranger and the upkeep, that problem's solved," he said.

Rodighiero said it's important to keep scouting alive in the area, because the program is such a good influence on boys.

"In our area, drugs have taken over our youth and this is a positive role for our kids to lead them in the right direction and it's working," Rodighiero said.

And Rodighiero says the council shouldn't be concerned if the camps aren't all that profitable.

"I never did know of scouting being a profit. I thought the profit was seeing kids learn stuff and making a better young man out of them. I think that's profit enough," Rodighiero said.

But even with county and state officials pledging financial support, he said he got the impression the Buckskin Council was still considering getting rid of the camps.

The Pocahontas County Commission is also joining the fray, lobbying the council to hang onto the Buckskin Scout Reservation, also known as Dilley's Mill.

David Fleming says he and his fellow commissioners don't want to see the council sell off its land. He said the reservation is a county asset frequently used by the community, especially the area's active senior citizen community, who recently hosted a picnic at the camp.

"I don't know what they would do if they didn't have the Buckskin Reservation," Fleming said.

The commissioner said he's worried about what the property's future owner would do with the lushly forested land, a tract of about 2,000 acres.

"My concern is it might just be overdeveloped or something in a way that wouldn't be compatible with the Boy Scout reservation," he said.

Like the Logan County Commission, Fleming said his county is willing to "step up for our part of it."

With Logan's $40,000, Fleming said the Pocahontas camp's share of the deficit couldn't amount to much.

"I'd invited Mr. Purdy to come to us at the Pocahontas County Commission to see what kind of situation they're in and see what we can do to help," Fleming said.

Purdy hasn't met with the county commission yet, but Fleming says he's not optimistic about the executive scout's viewpoint after talking with him.

"The impression I got from Mr. Purdy was that, even with that, the board still had this matter of thinking that they were going to sell," Fleming said.

Fleming said selling even a fraction of the Buckskin Reservation's land could mean a big profit for the Buckskin Council. Some of the property lies between W.Va. 28 and the Greenbrier River and is prime real estate.

"Greenbrier riverfront properties are very attractive, even in this market," he said.

The commissioner said land in Pocahontas County is quite expensive, even with the current economic slump, fetching at least $15,000 per acre. The camp's riverfront property could go for $20,000 an acre, and that's a low estimate.

With all that potential revenue and Buckskin Council unenthused about taking counties' money, Fleming says he wonders if an unbalanced budget is really the council's motive for ridding itself of the three camps. He says he can't speculate what the council's real motive might be, though.

"I'm just concerned they might be too anxious to do something that doesn't need to be done," he said.

Camp supporters are also turning to the Internet to influence the Buckskin Council's executive board.

Marcus Bailey, 25, started the Facebook group "Save Our Scout Camps" after attending the council's Chief Logan meeting.

Bailey, a lodge advisor for the Boy Scout honor society Order of the Arrow, says he started the group to organize scouts' online campaign.

"There were blogs here, random news articles here and there, and I was trying to get everything kind of tied in to one hub," he said.

As of Monday, the group had 213 members.

Bailey, who went to the Pocahontas reservation for five years as a camper and three years as a staff member, goes to the Buckskin Reservation every year with Order of the Arrow members to set up camp, trim weeds, paint and do other general maintenance before summer camp starts.

Jack Furst, chairman of the National Scouting Center project, has said the Boy Scouts' 10,600-acre Garden Ground Mountain property in Fayette County could host a national summer camp.

In its list of recommendations to the executive board, the council's property task force suggested selling off all of the Buckskin Reservation "if satisfactory arrangements are worked out."

Bailey said the loss of local camps would mean a loss of local scouting legacy.

"If everything goes to the national camp, that's a national camp. You lose your local sense of tradition, the heritage aspect of the whole program," he said. "There's something special about going to the camp that your father went to."

So Bailey is working on his own set of property recommendations, ones that would allow scouts to keep their camps but ease the Buckskin Council's financial strain.

Bailey's recommendations include setting up a 501©3 nonprofit corporation to lease and run the Buckskin Scout Reservation. He's also suggesting the council log parts of the 1,200 acres it wants to sell to fix up all three camps.

If the Boy Scouts' national summer camp does come to fruition, Bailey said the Buckskin Scout Reservation could host a non-merit badge-based event for scouts attending the summer camp.

He said groups could extend their stay by a couple of days for an Appalachian heritage program that shows off the Pocahontas County camp.

Contact writer Zack Harold at 304-348-7939 or zack.harold@dailymail.com

Gee.... I hope they don't trespass while fighting for their camp.

$4,000,000 dollars is waiting for them without selling one single acre of land! Now that is a deal! normanalderman@yahoo.com

What I don't understand is why someone can't sell something they own without getting called a bad person. If it means that much to that many people, you people get together throw your money in a hat and buy it.

Is the property in that area being appraised at $15,000 - $20,000 an acre? If the owners of similiar properties are paying taxes based on that kind of assessed value the county should be taking in a huge amount of tax money.