Taughannock District
Baden-Powell Council, BSA
Commissioners

Announcements | Information | Commissioner Corps | Unit Commissioners

Our Website Has Moved

If you're reading this notice, you have an out-of-date bookmark.

While we have had the TompkinsCortlandScouts.org domain name for many years, we never really had a place to put the website. The domain was actually just an alias for some other website. So, every time you accessed TompkinsCortlandScouts.org, some other address appeared in your browser's address bar - mostly, home.htva.net/~wb2jwd/, which is the space my cable company gave me, but sometimes www.bpmlegal.com, my office website -  and if you bookmarked the site, you wound up bookmarking the actual address, not TompkinsCortlandScouts.org. Worse, htva.net only gave me 20MB of storage space, total, so we were very limited in how much we could post on that site.

Thanks to Mark Travis of Pack 197 and Good News Computing, the Taughannock District Website now has a real home, and oodles of space to live in (one "oodle" = several gigabytes). And, thanks to a suggestion from Oliver Habich of Troop 4, we also have a shorter, easier-to-type domain - TCScouts.org  - two names, the same website.

What this means to you is:

• Old Bookmarks won't be right: If you have any bookmarks in your browser for any of the pages in the Taughannock District Website, they probably point to the actual site of the old page, not the new site. So, you'll need to...
• Change your Bookmarks: At least in Firefox or IE, that means right-clicking on the bookmark, click on "Properties" and change the part of the address which says "home.htva.net/~wb2jwd/" or "www.bpmlegal.com" to --www.TCScouts.org-- or --www.TompkinsCortlandScouts.org-- (either will work, if you're lazy like me, use the shorter one). The rest of the address remains the same.
  So, "http://home.htva.net/~wb2jwd/announce.htm" becomes --http://www.TCScouts.org/announce.htm --
• Or, save new bookmarks: If you don't want to edit your old bookmark, you can always follow one of these links http://www.TompkinsCortlandScouts.org or http://www.TCScouts.org , find the page you want, and save a new bookmark. 
• The old website will be taken down after January 1st, and all of the pages will be set to redirect to the new server. So if you don't update your bookmarks now, now you can always follow the forwarding link and save a new bookmark later on.

Click Here to Access the New Web Site

Yrs. in Scouting,
Mike Brown
District Commissioner

Commissioner Announcements

• Journey to Excellence Forms will need to be reviewed with unit leaders for the 2011 and 2012 year.  

• Unit Calendars - "Failure to plan is planning to fail" - does each of your units have a schedule covering, at the least, the next three to four months? If not, they should - better yet, every unit should have an annual calendar in place at the start of the Scout year in August or September covering at least their monthly outing or major activity through the end of the Scout year the following July. For each month, a detail plan for meetings should be in place: 

  • Cub Packs may rely on the National Monthly Theme system for monthly den and pack meetings - all Packs should be following the Cub 2010 Program Delivery plan. 

  • Scout Troops should have their Patrol Leaders plan meetings on at least a quarterly basis - semi-annual or annual would be even better. 

  • Venture Crews should have a schedule calling for crew meetings on at least a monthly basis, and for a major activity on a monthly or quarterly schedule. 

Information For Commissioners

• Monthly Commissioner Meetings are held on the second Wednesday of each month as a breakout at the District Leaders' Roundtable - 7:30 - Dryden High School 

  The monthly roundtable is the principal training and communications program for the District. It is important that all Commissioners make an effort to attend the monthly meetings - not only will we be covering unit status reports and providing information for you to bring to your units, but this is also a great opportunity to touch base with your unit leaders (and perhaps to encourage them to attend, if they don't normally do so!).  Note: there are no roundtables in July or August, and the June roundtable is usually a picnic.  

  Dryden High School is at 118 Freeville Road (Route 38 North), on the right about half a mile from the intersection of Route 13 and Route 38 North in Dryden village. Look for the Queen Diner on the Route 13/38 North corner. Note this is Route 38 North (Freeville Road) leading to Groton, not Route 38 South (South Street) leading to Owego! 

• Each unit commissioner should visit each unit every month! This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to attend a unit meeting every month, but you should at the very least contact the unit leader or Committee Chair or make a point to chat with someone from the unit at Roundtable. Attending a Unit Committee meeting counts as a "visit", as does dropping in on a unit activity. 

• Please log all of your unit visits on the Unit Visit Tracking System (UVTS): To access the Unit Visit Tracking System, sign in through Myscouting.org If you're having trouble with the UVTS, contact Mike Brown or Jeff McKinney. 

• Useful Links for Commissioners:

  • BSA National Commissioners' Page - includes links to Commissioners' newsletter, Fast Start Training, UVTS, publications

  • Netcommish.com - Commissioners' website from the US Scouting Service Project - includes a weekly column called "Ask Andy" that's well worth bookmarking!

The "Commissioner Corps"

Roundtable Commissioners - roundtable@TompkinsCortlandScouts.org
Scout Roundtable Commissioner: Mike Stoll 753-9277 - mfstoll@odyssey.net
Cub Roundtable Commissioner:  Tom Sorensen sorensens@juno.com

Unit Commissioners