Set up to Fail

When councils across the nation re-aligned, they were given a mandate from GSUSA: NO disposal of property until 2 years after the merger. The reason was so that councils could adjust from the upheaval of the mergers before making more profound changes. Council management would have time to get some insight into which sites got the most usage, report to the board, and go through an evaluation process.
Here's how GSNEO played it:

• The council came into existence October 1 , 2007.
• No one was even allowed to reserve a campsite outside of their old council until almost one year later (Sept 1, 2008)
  
• But even then the cumbersome, regionalized reservation process made it impossible to select choices in more than one region.
  
• Plus- the council website did not even list the different camps. If leaders didn't already know what was there, they had no easy way to find out.
  

By spring of 2009, the board chose which camps it was closing - based on data from roughly 8 months of camping patterns operating in a dysfunctional system!

But they were technically following the rules, because none of the camps actually closed until October 1, 2009 - 2 years after the merger.