From: Scouter John

To: Troop 316

Re: Materials for Menu Plans for Outings

Re: April 10, 2002

Dear Scouts and Scouters,

I wanted to remind/inform people of the fact that our troop has practiced a policy of allowing our Treasurer the discretion of giving patrol cooks advances for purchasing materials for menu plans for our outings.

A standard rule of thumb which we have used in the past for our outings is that expenses for materials for menu plans will come to about $2.50 per meal per Scout.

Our typical weekend outing has four meals : Saturday breakfast, Saturday lunch, Saturday supper, and Sunday Breakfast.

Hence, on our typical weekend outing, the above stated rule of thumb would anticipate a cost of $10.00 per Scout for expenses for materials for menu plans.

If our Treasurer were to follow this rule of thumb, our Treasurer would be prepared to give an advance of, for example, $60.00 to the patrol cook of a patrol which was planning on feeding five Scouts and one adult leader at each of its meals on a typical weekend outing. It would be expected that this money would also cover the lesser costs of the optional cracker barrels which the patrol might wish to conduct on Friday evening and/or Saturday evening.

If you are one of our patrol cooks on one of our outings and you do not need to or do not wish to go to the trouble of obtaining an advance, then you should go ahead and purchase the materials for the outing and then seek to be reimbursed for your expenditures. Please, however, whichever course you take, seek to follow the general rule of thumb which we have found to work for us in the past. Hopefully, it will continue to work for at least a little while longer.

If you have any questions about getting an advance, you should contact our Treasurer, Mr. Leonard Eaton:

leaton@fnba.com, eatonfamly@aol.com

Please understand that decisions concerning advances are subject to Mr. Eaton's discretion. I have only given you what I understand to have been the general rule of thumb that our Treasurer has operated under in the past.