South Charleston Library Director Patricia Brown beams after getting a check for $16,729.88 from Roger Hughes (left), of state Treasurer John Perdue’s office, as South Charleston resident Martin Akor listens.
SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Used to collecting overdue library fines, South Charleston Public Library officials got a much bigger payout on Monday, when a representative of the state Treasurer’s Office presented the library with a unclaimed property check for nearly $17,000.
“Here’s your little slice of heaven here,” said Roger Hughes, of state Treasurer John Perdue’s office, as he handed a check to library Director Patricia Brown at the start of a library board meeting Monday. “I’m so pleased that I was able to find this and tell Patricia about it and get it back to you.”
Brown estimated the check is about 10 percent of the library’s annual budget.
When Hughes first told Brown about the check — exact total, $16,729.88 — “she was, as most people are, somewhat skeptical.”
“By law, I can’t tell her how much it was. Even she doesn’t know how much it is, but I told her to trust me — ‘You’ll like me a whole lot more after this is done,’” Hughes said.
“Look for the fine print,” one of the attendees at Monday’s meeting joked, as Brown read the figure on the check. “It’s probably a loan.”
“They are rather skeptical, huh?” Brown said.
Board members started clapping when they heard the dollar amount.
“I told you you’d like me a lot better when you knew…
