- The Boy Scouts of America has mortgaged one of the most spectacular properties it owns, the vast Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, to help secure a line of credit as the financially strapped organization faces a growing wave of new sex-abuse lawsuits.

The BSA said Friday that it has no plans to sell the property, and that the land is being used as collateral to help meet financial needs that include rising insurance costs related to sex-abuse litigation.

However, the move dismayed a member of Philmont’s oversight committee, who says it violates agreements made when the land was donated in 1938. The BSA disputed his assertion.

Top BSA officials signed the document in March, but members of the Philmont Ranch Committee only recently learned of the development, according to committee member Mark Stinnett.

In a memo sent to his fellow members, Stinnett — a Colorado-based lawyer — decried the financial maneuver and the lack of consultation with the committee.

“I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am to be the one to break this news to you,” Stinnett wrote. “The first point of the Scout Law is ‘A Scout is trustworthy.’ I am distressed beyond words at learning that our leaders apparently have not been.”

“But I am even more distressed to learn that Waite Phillips’ magnificent gift has now been put at risk,” Stinnett added.

Phillips was a successful oilman who used some of his fortune to develop a huge ranch in northeastern New Mexico. In 1938, and again in 1941, he donated two large tracts of the ranch to the Boy Scouts.

- Stinnett wrote that ranch committee member Julie Puckett — a granddaughter of Waite Phillips — had urged BSA officials in recent weeks to recognize Philmont as a restricted asset based on the understandings of all parties when Phillips donated the land.

“BSA management has instead stated its position that Philmont and its endowment are free and clear of restrictions and are thus theirs to take or encumber as they wish,” Stinnett wrote, depicting that stance as a “betrayal” of agreements made with the Phillips family.

The Boy Scouts disputed Stinnett’s assertion, saying nothing in the agreements with the Phillips family prevented the ranch from being used as collateral.