Orange Beach & Gulf Shores School System GO Ahead

Monday, December 19, 2005
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

Mike's comment: Good school systems boost property values. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach have qualified to create their own school system and separate from the county system. Due to the high tax revenues from the beach, this would create the HIGHEST funded system in the state.


GULF SHORES -- A special census conducted in recent months has found that Orange Beach has about 5,300 year-round residents, which exceeds the threshold for cities to split from their county school systems.

The finding has renewed talks between Orange Beach and neighboring Gulf Shores about seceding from the Baldwin County Public Schools System because it allows them to skirt political and legal hurdles that have prevented the creation of a new school district that also would include unincorporated Fort Morgan and Ono Island.

Under state law, only county and city school systems are allowed and anything else would require a constitutional amendment approved by voters statewide. Local legislators have been reluctant to support the proposal and city leaders have been hesitant to spend money on an uncertain statewide lobbying effort.

But the law, city officials said, doesn't prohibit two cities from breaking away from a county system and then contracting with each other to share facilities, administration and students. A referendum passed by local voters would be necessary to levy the taxes to support the proposed system, though.

"It's like the door's opened," Orange Beach City Councilman Pete Blalock said at Gulf Shores City Hall during a meeting last week. "We've just got to walk through it now."

City officials said at the meeting that their goal would be to have a new school system in place for the 2007-08 school year.

Once they reach 5,000 residents, cities are supposed to split from county systems or contract with their local boards of education to remain part of the larger districts, according to state law. But that doesn't always happen; many cities have remain affiliated with county school systems long after they've surpassed 5,000 residents, including Mobile, Daphne and Gulf Shores.

There has been a push to increase the population threshold to 15,000, according to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach officials, so they want to formally declare their intention to withdraw from the Baldwin County Public Schools System before lawmakers -- who convene in Montgomery in January -- have a chance to make the change.

"Honestly, if we can get our ducks in a row, I would like to go ahead and declare before that happens," Blalock said. "That will at least grandfather us in no matter what they do."

In November 2002, the cities paid Birmingham education consultant Ira Harvey $15,000 to study the feasibility of a so-called Island-wide school system. Completed in June, 2003, Harvey's work concluded that the Gulf-front cities could have the most well-funded school system in the state with a tax increase of 12 mills, for a total levy of 24 mills.

Property owners in the Birmingham suburb of Vestavia Hills pay 52 mills to fund what are considered among the best schools in the state.

A mill is equal to $1 in taxes for every $1,000 of assessed property value. A house appraised by the county for $100,000 is assessed at 10 percent of that, for an assessed value of $10,000. Each 1-mill increase, therefore, would mean a $10 per year increase in taxes.

In Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, however, a substantial portion of residential property is considered commercial, such as condominiums and beach homes that are rented to vacationers. That property is assessed at 20 percent of its appraised value.

Harvey's study didn't account for these higher assessments, nor did it foresee the dramatic rise in property values that has occurred since. For those reasons, Orange Beach Mayor Steve Russo said, city officials are looking into exempting owners of non-commercial property from any tax increase, which would likely improve the chances of a successful referendum to boost taxes.

Harvey is updating his study to account for the new real-estate values and higher assessments, and another education consultant is concluding a study of that will show what the increased funding could provide that the local schools don't have now, from new equipment to expanded class offerings to employee raises, said City Administrator Jeff Moon.

Both will be used when city officials take the matter to residents in coming weeks.

For his part, Baldwin County Board of Education Superintendent Faron Hollinger said in an interview last week that he opposes a second system, but would cooperate with the cities' information requests and hopes to have a discussion with local leaders soon.

"I continue to believe that maintaining a single system in the county would always be our favored position," he said. "We think we could avoid redundancy in administrative costs."

Hollinger said the Baldwin County school board is researching ways for Baldwin County municipalities to raise property taxes to increase funding at their local schools.

"There's some advantage to that rather than pulling out and raising taxes," he said.

Also, the school board and cities would have to negotiate the takeover of the county system's buildings and debts as well as what to do with students living in the unincorporated areas, Hollinger and city officials said.