"It's not LL that is screwing things up. It's parents...."
Parents can absolutely cause problems.
But Williamsport is, IMHO, populated by the masters of officious intermeddling. Like Catbert in the Dilbert strips, they seem to take pleasure in making rules just to prove that they can -- rules that enhance no interest, just present obstacles. I have taken issue in particular with certain rules that presented safety risks. No debate allowed, no complaints heard, this is how it'll be, the end.
The other thing they've done is sold the entire program down the river, sacrificed on the altar of TV dollars generated by the August World Series. Everything revolves around an event that a fraction of a percent of the players ever have hope of participating in. In our area, the regular season is over when school lets out, and playoffs end soon after -- all so that the few all stars can play.
You can say that travel ball is killing Little League, and there may be some truth in that. But to me, Little League's failure to serve its target clientele is driving people out of Little League and into travel ball. Because travel ball is flexible. No matter what your goals are, you can find a program that matches up. In response to which, Little League gripes about how everyone abandons them. You may as well be the horse-and-buggy makers complaining about that Henry Ford guy.
Sometimes I think people go to Wiliamsport in hopes that, if they make big enough nuisances of themselves, maybe they'll get the call to the big leagues -- and land a job with the NCAA.
Man did Midlo nail it. I had the distinct pleasure of being part of a Little League "development committee" for 50/70 in 2012. We were part of numerous conference calls, meetings, meetings about the conference calls, Facebook presentations, etc etc etc. Reality is no one in Williamsport wanted to hear a thing, they were doing it their way - period. I was representing Orange County CA, where travel ball is certainly king yet dozens of kids my sons age wanted to stay in LL for the social aspects of the game & then move into travel ball come summer. It was a nightmare I'd prefer to not re-live, and our league alone lost 27 families (including us) that would have been paying customers for 50/70 because of the archaic way the district & Williamsport wanted to do things. At the beginning we suggested that the 50/70 fields & rules may actually be better suited to the Majors division for the 11's & 12's - that was shot down practically before I finished saying it. Why? "Because then we'd have to modify the fields in Williamsport and thats not happening." So as Midlo points out, what may be best for the survival of the league as a whole is shot down due to a tournament that 1/10 of 1% of the kids get to participate in?
Going back to the OP - Williamsport will spend months & months discussing 50/70 rules about a players ability to have a sticker on his helmet, but it wasn't until NOW that someone decided to get serious about the Chicago boundary issue? There was no way to do that between sign ups in Dec / Jan and the World Series in the summer? Seriously? Last time I was on a LL board we checked & verified residency on 350+ kids in 2012 in about three weeks, how hard can it be to do ONE team???