Fairhope officials are looking inward on public education after Baldwin County voters soundly rejected a proposed property tax increase for schools on March 31. The defeat has prompted the city’s Education Advisory Committee to organize its own community forum, tentatively scheduled for May 12, to gauge what residents actually want for local schools.
The failed measure would have raised property taxes by 8 mills to help fund a 10-year, $350 million school expansion plan for Baldwin County. Two of three separate tax renewal measures on the same ballot also failed countywide, though Fairhope voters themselves approved all three renewals within city limits. It was the new 8-mill increase that sank the overall effort, with more than 700 voters who backed the renewals switching their stance against the additional tax.
Councilwoman Diana Brewer, the city council’s liaison to the Education Advisory Committee, said the panel met the day after the vote to start unpacking what happened. “The question was: what were people voting against?” Brewer said, noting that the reasons likely varied widely among voters. The upcoming forum is meant to move past that question and toward a longer-term conversation about what residents want from Fairhope’s schools.
Plans call for dividing forum participants into five groups: city residents with children, people who live outside the city limits but use its schools, retirees, community leaders and educators. Each group would be asked to articulate its own vision for local education, according to Brewer. Details, including the exact time and location, are expected to be finalized at the committee’s meeting on April 15 at the Fairhope Public Library board room, with a full briefing to follow at the city council’s April 27 work session. Organizers have discussed holding the forum at 6 p.m. on May 12 at the Fairhope United Methodist Church’s Christian Life Center on Morphy Avenue.
Local economist Semoon Chang, director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies, is expected to speak at the event about the economic stakes tied to public education funding in Baldwin County.
The forum builds on a track record of city investment in schools. Since 2012, when four new council members took office, Fairhope’s council has approved more than $1 million for the five-school feeder pattern that includes Fairhope High, Fairhope Middle, Fairhope Intermediate, Fairhope Elementary and J. Larry Newton Elementary. Just before the referendum, the council unanimously backed renewing 7 mills of existing property tax alongside the since-rejected 8-mill increase.
Mayor Tim Kant said he believes residents broadly value education but were unsettled by the specifics of the county school board’s capital plan, which included reopening a K-1 center downtown that had closed in 2011 and adding 20 classrooms to Fairhope High. “I think some of the choices they had were confusing,” Kant said, adding that officials now have to work with the outcome voters delivered. Turnout for the March 31 referendum was about 38 percent of registered voters, with just over 4,000 of roughly 10,500 eligible voters casting ballots at the Fairhope Civic Center.