Stake Announcements

[Gary_Miller]

And member no matter where they are from have a right to use the building as long as it does not conflict with the event of the local units. Just saying.

Have a right? Can you find that in any policy manual? The best I can do is they "may" use the building.

Ok, maybe right was a bit strong. But as long as your a member of the church and there is room on the calendar. You should have use of the buildings no matter where they are located. Just Saying.

[russellhltn]

and there is room on the calendar

And there's the rub. You end up with out-of-town people who may or may not leave the facility clean after a Saturday night event. Who may end up scheduling before the stake members, and may get bounced out for a ward event just a few months prior to their wedding day. I suspect our stake's rules came about after too many stressful, tearful, problems.

[Gary_Miller]

You end up with out-of-town people who may or may not leave the facility clean after a Saturday night event.

While this may happen at time I would bet its an exception as the average member knows they have to clean up after themselves. So I see this as a weak argument.

Who may end up scheduling before the stake members, and may get bounced out for a ward event just a few months prior to their wedding day. I suspect our stake's rules came about after too many stressful, tearful, problems.

If your running into these type of problems its an internal lack of planning issue with the wards in the stake. One way around this would be to only book events for out of stake units no earlier than three months out. That way the wards in the stake have more than enough time to schedule their events.

[lajackson]

You end up with out-of-town people who may or may not leave the facility clean after a Saturday night event.

While this may happen at time I would bet its an exception as the average member knows they have to clean up after themselves. So I see this as a weak argument.

Sadly, it is more the rule here, rather than the exception.

So we do not allow out of unit scheduling of the building unless there has been bishop to bishop contact, and a member of a unit in the building is available to oversee the activity.

If an out of unit member gets a good recommendation from their bishop, and we have someone available locally to open/close/check-in/followup, they may use the building if it is otherwise available.

[drepouille]

Even our local BSA leaders don't clean up as well as they should, and they meet regularly in our meetinghouses.

[johnshaw]

Our new Stake Center is next to a new Temple, it is used all the time for out-of-unit events. We consulted with the Nauvoo Stake about how they work through this process and used some of their ideas and some of our own. We have required our stake and wards to book their events for the year, we give them a date and after that the calendar is fair game. We have a couple called that coordinate the events with units outside our stake. We communicate with them that if our stake has an ecclesiastical-related event it may take precedence and would assign them to the next closest meetinghouse (which isn't too inconvenient). The couple that works with the out-of-unit leaders opens the building and does a walk through after. Very little issues arise when you set expectations up front and follow-through with expectations.

Our Agent Unit is still responsible to work out issues in the building and the stake if there is a conflict or a desire to add/modify events, and that person works with our out-of-unit request coordinators.

So far it's worked out well, we've had Family Reunions, Weddings, Youth groups, regional meetings, etc...

[lajackson]

We have a couple called that coordinate the events with units outside our stake.

And that, I believe, is your key to success.