More than 360 concerned parents, scout leaders and members of the scouting community have signed a petition to keep Federal Way-based Camp Kilworth open after the Pacific Harbors Council of Boy Scouts of America announced its closure last month.

Camp Kilworth is one of four camps and one center that will close for financial reasons due to declining membership and use, according to Scout Executive Ralph Voelker.

But supporters say the camp’s closure will do more harm than good.

Dane Bergman, a Federal Way resident who was on the property committee for Camp Kilworth and was a program director for Cub Scouts for about four years, said closing the camp will just contribute to the already declining membership.

“If you don’t have a camp, numbers will go down,” Bergman said. “For a lot of parents in our area, they don’t have time to drive down there.”

Bergman is referring to the one camp that will remain open – Camp Thunderbird on Summit Lake in Olympia. That camp is part of the Pacific Harbors Council’s vision of a “one camp plan.”

Camp Kilworth served scouters in Federal Way, Tacoma, Edgewood, Milton and Fife, Bergman added.

Bergman’s son is now in Boy Scouts Troop 361 but attended Camp Kilworth every summer for four years as a Cub Scout and continued to volunteer after he got older.

“It’s right in the city, it’s conveniently located for drop off and pick up but the 25 acres and forest makes you feel like you’re in the woods,” Bergman said, adding the view of Puget Sound and wildlife, coupled with the fire bowl ceremonies and Rotary Lodge, are elements that make this camp special.

However, Voelker said Camp Kilworth isn’t as centrally located as many of the petitioners believe it to be.

“[The petition] says they would have to drive two-and-a-half hours to another camp,” Voelker said. “That’s not true. We have two scheduled in Gig Harbor and Tacoma … Camp Kilworth is not in the middle, it’s on the edge.”

Convenience and travel time aside, closing the camp will impact more than just the Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts.

“I think the council is set in their ways but they need to understand it’s going to hurt the council altogether to lose this wonderful Cub camp,” said Jerome Drazkowski, the program director at Camp Kilworth for the last two years. “It’s used by the Rotary, it’s going to affect multiple groups of people.”

Shailyn Drazkowski, Jerome Drazkowski’s wife, said she understands where the council is coming from in terms of the financial difficulties but hopes that closing the camp was a last resort and that there wasn’t another way around it.

The Drazkowskis’ son Dayton is a Cub Scout with Cub Scout Pack 318.

The pack has fixed up the Chalet, had windows donated, fixed the deck, cleared brush, pressure washed and re-painted parts of the camp and had several truckloads of gravel donated from Miles Sand and Gravel for the Pinewood Derby. They’ve also fixed the archery range, donated BB guns and built 24 benches for the camp.

“It’s teaching them to work together,” Shailyn Drazkowski said. “I really believe in seeing the reaction of the scouts taking pride in their work and community, fixing it up. So many are so upset finding out that it’ll close.”

Jerome Drazkowski said he also uses the camp’s features as a selling point for membership.

“One of my best tools I use for recruiting is Camp Kilworth,” he said. “What gets the kids so excited is knowing they have a camp right here.”

He said, since he first started recruiting, he’s grown the pack upwards of 40 kids with it consistently between 30-40.

And Bergman points out that the camp is used more than a week over the summer and a couple of scattered weekends.

“A lot of people on the board or council don’t know much about the camp and don’t understand the value of the camp itself,” Bergman said. “They also repeatedly claim under-use but that’s not the case. The camp does get used.”

But Voelker said there’s about 340 Cub Scouts in the Federal Way area and less than half use the day camp at Camp Kilworth, which is down 15 percent from last year.

“That area is a big loss of membership and it’s translated into a lack of user-ship at the camp,” he said. “There’s more people signed up for the petition than Cub Scouts signed up in the district.”

Voelker said it’s nice to know that people care, which can be read on the petition’s many comments, but the only way the camp would have a chance at staying open is through a major donation of some sort.

Voelker acknowledged the 20-25 volunteers who donated time on the camp’s maintenance, and the 200-300 people who attended the Comcast Cares days, which “made a huge difference,” but he “wishes there was three times as many” volunteers.

“One main issue is, what is the solution?” Bergman said. “People have put forth ideas repeatedly but, basically, to be shut down.”

Some of those ideas include how to make the camp more profitable, which includes better marketing.

While the Pacific Harbors Council will not sell Camp Kilworth because of a longtime deed requirement that the property must be used for scouting purposes, closing the camp, and therefore doing away with maintenance obligations, will save the council thousands of dollars.

For more information, visit www.pacificharbors.org. To sign the petition to keep Camp Kilworth open, visit www.thepetitionsite.com/395/918/364/keep-camp-kilworth-open.