Reporting by Mike Schuh
PERRY HALL, Md. (WJZ)
March 23, 2009
Far from a musty stack of books, this new space in Perry Hall is alive with a kid's playroom and a huge children's section.
There's also a teen area with a new study place. There's a fireplace in the quiet room and a drive-thru.
It officially opened Monday.
"I am so ecstatic," said Caroline Seamon.
It took more than $7 million to get to this point: double the size, double the collection and five times as many computers.
"I really don't know how all the funding came through," Seamon said.
So the one big upside to the real estate boom is that it paid for this library. If you bought a house in the county in the past six years, you helped pay for the library.
"We're very fortunate, quite frankly," said County Executive Jim Smith.
At the start of the housing boom, Smith wouldn't allow the unprecedented transfer taxes, which average $4,000 per sale or refinance, to swell the regular budget. This money was set aside to build things.
"We banked them for one time projects--new schools, renovate community centers, build libraries," Smith said.
Other counties are studying how Baltimore County did it, so next boom they don't find themselves out of money when a boom busts.
Ground will be broken on an identical twin to that library in Arbutus in May.
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