Word: council
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Leaning against the fence of a simple horse barn one recent Sunday afternoon, Lynn Gentine wistfully watched her oldest daughter, 13-year-old Mikayla, groom a chestnut mare named Sadie for perhaps the last time. The horse program, an activity of the local Girl Scouts council, is shutting down as the organization suffers declining membership and dwindling resources. The council itself is being merged with another, which doesn't need Camp Daisy's horses...
Part of that approach involves reducing the number of local Girl Scout councils from 312 to 109 through mergers. In some cases, the newly merged councils have more facilities than they need. For example, when Camp Daisy moved under the umbrella of the Kansas City, Mo., council, officers took a cold look at the rustic horse barn. The council already has a state-of-the-art Scout Equestrian center two hours away, which made Daisy's horse program an easy target. (The Scouts are still trying to figure out just what to do with Daisy's 23 horses...
...about half of the enlarged Kansas City council's 1,700 acres of camps are being "rested" for a year while final decisions are made about their fates. That includes Camp Oakledge, a 420-acre lakefront retreat in the Missouri Ozarks with a mile of shoreline. To some, "rested" is just a way of saying that the camps will be sold. "It's difficult, but it's necessary to ensure the future of this organization," says Girl Scout spokeswoman Gina Garvin of the Kansas City area. Camps cost the council $1.7 million last year, so something has to give...
...sagging cookie sales, a drop-off in donations and investment losses, the Kansas City council expects a $1.6 million loss this year. Each council has its own budget, separate from the national organization's $70 million. Nationally in 2007, Scouts lost $1 million in membership dues and another $1 million in grants and gifts...
...understand how remarkable that is, consider that Ameri is the leader of the Badr Brigades, the Iran-trained Shi'ite militia affiliated with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest Shi'ite political party. Sunnis fear and loathe the Badr Brigades almost as much as they do the dreaded Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. While the Mahdi Army is blamed for most of the random street violence during the 2005-07 civil war, many Sunnis believe the Badr Brigades systematically assassinated Sunni politicians and community leaders. (Ameri and other Badr leaders deny this...