Commissioner Meeting

No Commissioners Meeting

 

District Operations Committee Meeting

Attending:

• Mark Manchester, Interim West Area Field Director
• Charlie Howard-Gibbon, Member at Large
• Rose Godfrey, Unit Commissioner
• Richard Christman, Asst. District Commissioner
• Robin Rees, Unit Commissioner
• Paul Smith, Unit Commissioner
• Melanie Smith, Eagle Coordinator
• Marcin Owczarz, Order of the Arrow Advisor (Wekemnayon)
• Linda Owczarz, Special Needs Committee
• Bonnie Bouey, Community Member

Agenda Items

Announcements

• New District Director has been “hired” 
• New Field Director for the West Service Area will be joining after December 16th,
• Jeff Smith, having transferred as Field Director for Redwood Empire Service Area
• Chris Dempsey has provided his bio and will join us as District Chair in January
  • Will structure DOC with 3 Vice Chairs – Programs, Membership, Finance
• Upcoming Meetings
  • The next DOC and the Annual District Business Meeting will be Jan 8th 2026, at the Joaquin Miller Community Center. This will include discussing the budget and election of District Officers 

Finance

• Friends of Scouting
  • Family FOS campaign now over 138.00% of goal
  • Community FOS campaign 136.00% of goal
  • Overall 133.27% of goal
    • Next year, goal can be lowered (based on this year’s?) so that it remains achievable.

Membership

• Current Month 2025 1396 Youth Members 61 Units
• End of Month 2024 1426 Youth Members 58 Units
• End of Year 2024 1436 Youth Members 59 Units

Scouting For Food

• VERY Successful turnout!

  • All Legacy Districts (Alameda, Peralta, Tres Ranchos) received higher donations than in previous years

  • Alameda County Food Bank measures amounts by weight, not count (see the Council Webpage here for info)

  • Total Counts, by Item:

• Alameda Legacy = “over 18,000” per Richard Christman

• Peralta Legacy = “over 11,000” per Linda Owczarz, on behalf of  organizer Steve Gonzales. This is over 2X as much as in previous 5 years+. Way to go Steve!

• Tres Ranchos = “2 full truck loads” – per Marcin Owczarz, on behalf of our organizer, Yoshiko Bertetta

  • Tres Ranchos legacy district is negotiating with Three Crosses church to determine if they will continue to host their donations site.

  • Thank you, Yoshiko, for making this year possible!

• Thank you Organizers, our incredible Volunteers & community support, and especially, our Units!

Training (Charlie, reads Mike Wrenn’s report)

• Share with all units – Remember to register for LEAD 2026, January 26th, 2026 at Diablo Valley College (registration opened 11/1/25)
  • Current registration amount (figure not provided), has exceeded the amount this time last year
• NorCal Commissioner’s College will be held February 24th at the Plumber and Pipefitters Training Center Local 467, 1519 Rollins Road, Burlingame, CA 94010
• Charlie invites us to attend the former Redwood Empire Council’s own “University of Scouting” (their version of LEAD) 2nd Saturday in January, 2026. Santa Rosa
• Linda shared that beginning this year, LEAD has a new college track, “Special Needs & Disabilities” – see LEAD catalog for course listing and descriptions

Unit Rechartering (Rose)

• Commissioners! Encourage your units to renew sooner rather than later
  • Don’t wait for unit members to pay before registering
  • Instead, each member can renew their own registration
  • All that is needed to complete unit rechartering are the Key 3 + 2 registered / youth protection-trained adults to pay and file
  • For more info, go to: GGAC’s Unit Renewal webpage webpage

Camping Committee (Richard)

• WINTER CAMP AWARENESS!
  • Saturday, December 6th, U.S.S. Hornet
  • SOLD OUT – 500 participants / 80 Staff members
• Summer Camps:
  • Be a Champion for attending Summer Camps
  • Number of Scouts who attend from each unit (vs. unit as a whole) are down
  • Solutions to increase attendance discussed:
    • Unit leaders can schedule around scouts’ other events during summer
    • Units can attend summer camp at different weeks each summer and can attend different camps each time
    • Unit summer camp weeks DO NOT have to be the same each summer – it should vary according to Scouts’ schedules
• Jamborees:
  • World Jamboree discussed 2027 – Poland
    • Expensive but reasonable when compared to regular international travel opps.
    • Part of expense is that groups must provide their own event tents now (council used to provide but no longer) 
  • International Committee’s annual travel is to different country’s National Jamborees
    • Much less expensive than world jamboree
    • 2026 – Germany
• The district still needs a Camporee Chair, and Camporee committee members

Other Business:

• Rose submits request for a District Volunteer Recognition event to be held this spring (tentatively March / April)
  • Different ways of organizing by each legacy district was discussed, including Alameda’s Elk Lodge as a possible resource (through Richard)
  • Bonnie mentioned Pier 29 in Alameda – where Peralta legacy district held their last few volunteer recognition events
  • Charlie will facilitate coordinators
  • Volunteers from DOC: Rose, Robin, Paul, Richard, Linda, Marcin, and hoping for a former Peralta district lead, Charlie to ask David Stein
• Robin, Melanie and Rose discuss other fundraising events happening currently:
  • Christmas Tree lot in Castro Valley, organizer by Tina Mitchell
  • Very successful for past 5 years
  • Scouts and units earn a lot of $
• DOC Contacts
  • Bonnie requests to be included on DOC emails related to meeting at Joaquin Miller Community Center as she wasn’t this time and found out late.
• Linda mentioned we need to shore up our contact list – 4 different DOC members sent group emails this week and each recipient list was different
  • Charlie asked who keeps the lists – Alex Garcia, former D.E. sent meeting announcements, but it was determined that Charles Hoffman, our webmaster and announcement specialist, should keep our contact lists and be sending DOC announcements
  • Mark to ask Charles about how he wants to handle it
• Speaking of webmasters, Charles is also putting together a new Special Needs Support page for our district’s website with Linda. We’re excited!