I agree with Grandfather, compiling config statements as Perl executable statements is in general not a good idea. Another idea that I've used before is one of the modules like Config::INI::Reader, there are a number of .ini file type readers and writers.

Basically the idea is to make what looks like a very simple DB query to get the value that you want. A typical .INI type file is short and these modules build a memory resident hash. Access is very performant. Sometimes I build a very "thin" layer on top of the CPAN module so I can ask a question like: IsValidCity('Houston'); or whatever.