Supreme Court Rules On Gulf Shores School Tax

The Alabama Supreme Court recently ended a fight over tax revenue between the City of Gulf Shores and Baldwin County Board of Education in the wake of the former’s 2017 school system split from the latter, NBC15 reported. The ruling was that Gulf Shores City Schools (GSCS) was not entitled to the portion of a 1-cent countywide tax collected inside the City of Gulf Shores. The tax revenue was originally split between the Baldwin County Board of Education (55%), the Baldwin County General Fund (45%), and Coastal Alabama Community College (5%). Under the 2019 separation agreement, GSCS and the Baldwin County Board of Education agreed that other taxes collected for “public school purposes” would be split between the two systems, but the 1-cent tax was not addressed. The court ruled that since the language of the tax did not include GSCS, the court lacked the authority to change it.