Westover, Maryland - February 11, 2016- Students throughout the Somerset County Public School System have donated $12,424.85 to the Somerset County Library Foundation. The monies will be used to purchase equipment and furnishings inside the new Crisfield Library. This is part of the Library Foundation’s fundraising efforts to raise additional monies for interior items.
Crisfield Academy and High School Students against Destructive Decisions (SADD) raised $10,000 for furnishings and materials in Brad’s (Mason) Room of Knowledge in the new library. Mason passed away during the summer of 2013 due to a tragic automobile accident. He was a scholar and was active in numerous extracurricular and community activities.
In addition, several schools donated money to the Library Foundation. Woodson Elementary students raised $997.00 for the library fund. Crisfield Academy and High School students donated $401.00. Somerset Intermediate students contributed $372.11. Princess Anne Elementary School children brought in $265.49 while students at Deal Island Elementary School provided $244.11 and Greenwood Elementary students added $201.17.
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
4 comments:
Great work students!
The library costs way to much money. Please run a story on this.
Yes Joe indeed look into this boondoggle.The new library is not only built in an area that floods frequently.Millions in Federal grants to the Crisfield area and the library is all they have to show for it.Those millions would have been better invested in jobs so that local people stay here instead of leaving town after graduation.Hurricane Sandy brought millions of dollars to the city ,where did it all go?Oh thats right,some of it went to the white elephant that is the Carvel Hall site,which is never going to get tenants because the ground is tainted by heavy metals from when cutlery was made there.Thousands of dollars were spent on overhead doors and a roof for a building that will probably stay vacant for many years.
Crisfield Library construction is $6.45 million. That does not include land costs and engineering. Fundraising for furnishings is ongoing to raise another $750,000 so you can see this "boondoggle" will cost well over $7 million.
The entire project should have been shelved immediately after the real estate market crash but trustees (mostly from Princess Anne) had no idea Crisfield was sliding into an economic morass so they went full speed ahead.
There are more cost-effective ways to provide library services if the Corbin Memorial Library was inadequate (which it is not), and with computer use growing making room for technology is a lot more important than a larger (and architecturally out of character) building for books. Programs that are held every couple of days are really outside the scope of library services, and it should not be up to the taxpayers to build a new building just to have a "community room" when there are empty buildings and unused church halls all over Crisfield.
When a mall is past it's prime the IRS or some other government agency moves in. In Crisfield the new library is already making room for Somerset County Tourism and its visitors center. Is that what a library is for?
Yes 5:55 "boondoggle" is the right word. If the county and city taxpayer felt the pain of its construction they would have rebelled long ago, but like everything else in town it's somebody else's money.
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