By: centraljersey.com
Courtesy photo
Troop 709 members present petitions to Montgomery Mayor Mark Caliguire.
Stephanie Vaccaro
Staff Writer
MONTGOMERY – On Thursday, the Junior Girl Scout Troop 709 presented petitions with more than 900 signatures regarding the Mary Jacobs Library to the Montgomery Township Committee.
The petitions read: "Mary Jacobs Library is an essential part of our community. It serves township residents young and old, and is a vibrant, inviting community center. Children, teens, parents, seniors, scouts and other community groups rely on the library and its resources. If the library must close, thousands of residents like me will be affected. I support Mary Jacobs Library, and hope the Township Committee will too."
A recent expansion project in the library that reduced the size of its endowment coupled with a reduction in financial support from the municipality has sparked a campaign to garner community support to meet its annual need of $200,000 for costs associated with the building.
"The girls started working on their Bronze Award project in September of 2010," said Anne Weekes, co-leader. "The girls came up with all kinds of ideas for a Bronze Award project, which has to address a need in the community, and unanimously voted to help Mary Jacobs Library because they all enjoy going there and loved the idea that they could do something to help make sure it doesn’t close."Other requirements for earning a Bronze Award were completed during the 2009/2010 scouting year, said Ms. Weekes.
"This project showed the girls that they could make a difference for something they believe strongly about," said Ms. Weekes. "They learned they could take an idea and implement it from start to finish by coming up with the wording for the petition, collecting signatures and then presenting them to the Township Committee. They know that they raised awareness of the issue of the library possibly closing because a lot of people who signed the petition weren’t aware the library was in trouble. They were excited and proud to share with our Township Committee how strong the support for the library is in Montgomery so that the committee would have that awareness as they make decisions for the town.
"It’s been very rewarding for the girls to work on creating a petition, to share their passion for the library with so many members of the community and then on Thursday with the Township Committee and to realize that all of these people, including our local government, are supportive and proud of what they’ve done with this project as Girl Scouts.
"As Girl Scouts, our girls aren’t allowed to raise money for another organization, so they focused instead on bringing the issue of the library possibly closing to as many people as possible and to the Township Committee in the hopes that others would be able to support the library in whatever ways they would like, whether it’s passing the information on to others or making a donation on their own or attending one of the events held to gain support for the library.
The library has been a part of the girls’ lives since they were little," said Ms. Weekes. "They go there to take out books and DVDs, they’ve participated in kids’ programs that the library offers including the summer reading program. They run into friends and neighbors there. It’s a place they’re very positive about, and they’d be sad if it ever closed."

