Examining Both Sides Of Property Tax Vote For Tuscaloosa City Schools Funding

TUSCALOOSA, AL — The City of Tuscaloosa is just a few days out from a crucial vote on a property tax increase that, if passed, would provide additional revenue to Tuscaloosa City Schools (TCS).

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Over the last several months in the lead-up to the vote on Sept. 24, two competing political action committees (PACs) — The Committee to Secure the Future and Stop The Big Tax — have publicly traded barbs to sway votes, with attacks becoming increasingly personal as both sides accuse the other of peddling misinformation and only looking out for selfish interests.

The one thing representatives from both sides agree on at every turn, though, is that the outcome of the vote will be a close one.

The two sides acknowledge what is believed to be a sizable pool of undecided voters as compared to the decidedly failed outcome of the county schools requesting a similar property tax increase in 2023.

Those in favor of it have bullet-pointed many of the same line items as their unsuccessful counterparts in the county, apart from overcrowded county schools where kids are still eating lunch in their portable classrooms because their lunchrooms are too small.

That referendum failed by a blowout margin and many are using that outcome as a barometer for how Tuscaloosa City Schools' efforts will turn out.

Ahead of Tuscaloosa voters heading to the ballot box, Patch logged hours of interviews with the biggest players on both sides, along with conducting extensive independent research and gathering a wealth of background from those close to the situation, to cut through the political rhetoric and public grandstanding so voters can be as informed as possible before making their decision.

THE PLAYERS

Headed up by teacher and former Verner Elementary Principal Beth Curtis and former Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama Board Chair Michele Coley, The Committee to Secure the Future PAC filed its statement of organization on May 9, according to filings with the Alabama Secretary of State's Office.

Those with Stop The Big Tax claim their PAC was formed two months after the fact by business leaders consisting of developers and high-profile property owners such as Advantage Realty Group, Sherrill Realty Co., The Builders Group, Highlands Limited Partnership, Capstone Properties and Harris & Plott, LLC, among others.

Businessman Steven Rumsey was one of the original organizers and said that when he first began considering opposing the property tax increase, he and others were contacted by the city school system.

"They actually called us and wanted to talk to us and said 'we don't think you ought to oppose this,'" Rumsey told Patch. "They didn't tell me anything. It was a lot of spin doctoring."

As Patch previously reported, The Committee to Secure the Future also said donations to the opposition PAC come from families and firms that oversee significant rental property holdings in Tuscaloosa, claiming the businesses are purposefully spreading misinformation to "protect their pocketbooks over the needs of our school children."

The opposition group flatly denies these claims, for reasons that will be provided in more detail later, and accused the PAC of unfairly painting Stop The Big Tax as the villain.

Conversely, those involved with Stop The Big Tax have questioned if the city school system is using taxpayer money to advocate for increased revenue and if the PAC is using contact information from TCS for its direct text message marketing campaign.

Stop The Big Tax also insisted that the city school system has underlying interests of its own to look out for, citing two of the top contributors to Secure the Future: Southland Transportation Group and Kids First Education.

Indeed, the opposition group pointed to a $5,000 donation from Southland Transportation Group — a firm that sells school buses — and a $5,000 donation from company president Drew Linn before mentioning that TCS said in July it would need to purchase 50 new buses this year.

What's more, Stop The Big Tax also took issue with Kids First Education, LLC, which contributed $12,000 to the PAC in favor of the property tax increase.

Opponents went on to mention that the consulting firm was approved for an additional $295,000 in funding by the TCS Board of Education on Sept. 10 after also being awarded a $581,150 contract in January.

TCS leaders, when asked about these donations and contracts, chalked it up to little more than sour grapes from one side over the other side getting large donations from the aforementioned companies.

In the lead-up to the special election, though, both sides have raised tens of thousands of dollars for their respective campaigns, with the Committee to Secure the Future setting its narrative as "The 'Vote No' Landlords Vs. Teachers and Children."

By The Numbers

The best place to start can be found in what is at stake financially for TCS if the measure passes or fails. For most, this is going to be the long-winded, boring part of this expansive case study but one that is crucial as a reference point for the overall debate.

But things pick up fast once we establish this.

TCS Superintendent Mike Daria explained earlier this summer that the proposed increase would generate around $17.25 million a year starting in 2025.

As Patch previously reported, if the property tax increase is passed, it would result in the city's property tax millage rate increasing by 11.5 mills — resulting in a 22% increase in property taxes.

Using those with an assessed home value of $300,000 as an example, the school system says those homeowners would pay $345 more in property taxes each year if the increase is passed.

Detractors, particularly Stop The Big Tax, have insisted that property taxes have increased dramatically over the years while saying that the plan presented by the school system lacks substance as it relates to how the money will be spent and what outcomes they hope to achieve.

Indeed, Tuscaloosa Patch on Wednesday was provided with information by organizers for the opposition PAC that said Tuscaloosa property tax collections had increased by 1,170% since 1986.

In response, the Committee to Secure The Future, the PAC in favor of the property tax increase, pointed out on Thursday that, when adjusted for inflation, tax revenues had increased by a comparatively modest 159%, while school costs rose 272%.

It should also be noted that the revenue from the city's property tax collections in the late 1980s and early 90s came well before the economically transformative presence of Mercedes-Benz U.S. International's plant in Vance, which began operations in January 1997.

What's more, these worries came before the advent of necessary budgeting for school resource officers, iPads for every student and the myriad other new-age expenses for public education today.

Tuscaloosa Patch presented the 1,170% figure to TCS Chief School Financial Officer Jay Duke, who immediately questioned the methodology, before going on to provide data that showed property tax collections had annually increased 3.5% on average in the last several years.

"I went back 11 years and the average was about 4% or so," Duke told Patch in a sit-down interview this week at the TCS central office. "One year, it even went down a little bit. This assumption that it's doubling and tripling is wrong and the assumption that it's always going to increase is wrong or could be wrong. There could come a day when it could level off or drop. That's the reality. We've been clear that our revenue has gone up but it's been 4% on average every year. Revenue has not kept up with inflation and the cost of services."

Patch found that the discrepancy in the calculations that show the increase of over 1,000% was the result of two different starting points for the opposing groups, with Stop The Big Tax's analysis starting in 1986, while Secure The Future began its calculations in 1987 after the approved property tax increase went into effect.

Earlier this week, the Tuscaloosa City Board of Education approved the following strategic plan shown below relating to how the revenue would be spent, breaking it up into three different areas, beginning with "educator excellence."

It should be noted here that the current millage rate for homeowners in Tuscaloosa, unchanged since 1986, is 51.5 mills, of which TCS receives 15.5 mills, plus an additional 1.8 mills.

This first segment of the proposed plan, consisting of 5 mills, focuses on funding that protects or enhances existing programs, to the tune of $7.5 million. This would include a pay raise for employees, education incentives for retention and recruitment and competitive pay for career tech teachers.

TCS Board Chair Eric Wilson said during a press conference at his law office on Wednesday that the city school system ranks 103 out of 138 Alabama public school systems for teacher compensation.

"We are behind systems that we do not need or deserve to be behind," he said. "It's about our students, our teachers, and our programs and we don't want a ceiling on what this system can achieve."

The second segment of the spending plan consists of 4 mills that would generate $6 million in new revenue. The largest portion of this, $1.65 million, would be allocated for the system's Summer Learning Program — a popular program that promotes educational enrichment and helps parents save money on childcare.

TCS said on Friday that in 2017, only 350 TCS students participated in summer learning but the program has grown in recent years and served more than 3,500 students in 2024.

Additionally, the school system says 33 third graders who otherwise would have had to repeat the third grade due to reading scores were able to improve in reading to go on to the fourth grade.

The funding for "premier student programs and services" would also cover the unfunded portion of the system's Pre-K program, which is funded by the City of Tuscaloosa through its 1-cent sales tax initiative, Elevate Tuscaloosa. This would provide for universal Pre-K for the system and eliminate waitlists.

"Summer learning became a workforce issue because parents said 'hey, I can work now for these five weeks knowing I've got full daycare for my child' to the point it can save about $500 a month per child," Daria said.

Among the other line items would be $600,000 for math and reading interventionists and $500,000 for comprehensive extracurricular activities.

The smallest segment of the strategic plan, 2.5 mills, would go toward school safety and security — $3.75 million in total. The biggest chunk of this funding would be allocated toward putting Tuscaloosa Police officers in every TCS building, along with sweeping improvements to the system's security capabilities.

"It's not just police officers," Superintendent Mike Daria told Patch. "It's metal detectors and scanners. We pay personnel to be at these games. Safety is not police officers alone, it's our social workers, preventative and guidance counselors. SROs are just one component."

If the measure is voted down at the ballot box, TCS has said for months that it will be required to make additional staffing cuts, including reducing up to 50 educators and making cuts to certain programs like summer learning, which TCS said Friday would be drastically reduced to fewer students at fewer schools.

In this scenario, school system leaders say summer learning would likely go to a paid model, where families will have to pay to participate.

TCS has also said it would be forced to remain stagnant on pay for teachers if the measure fails, in addition to decreasing the school system's ability to ensure future funding of essential safety needs.

At present, TCS teachers start out making approximately $58,000 a year, which is just slightly above the average mean wage in Alabama of $53,400, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Alabama Department of Labor reported earlier this month that the average salary for Alabama teachers is $57,300.

Competing Interests

The two distinct sides battling over this issue have had some pointed things to say about one another, whether it be those in favor of the property tax increase decrying what they view as the explicit greed of the business interests behind the opposition or the opposition group calling for TCS Superintendent Mike Daria to be fired for what they view as his incompetence and mismanagement of the system's finances.

We decided to include this as the first issue to discuss that's not driven by black-and-white numbers due to Tuscaloosa Patch finding that, simply put, words hurt and have without question ramped up the intensity of the rhetoric from each side.

"These men are trashing our superintendent, questioning our educators, misrepresenting data, and degrading our progress; These are outright lies," Wilson said during the press conference. "These are men that in the seven years I've been on the board, I've not seen one of them at a board meeting or in our schools. They want to protect their own self-interests and as citizens that is fine. But don't hide behind the rhetoric they are throwing out against the system."

Former Tuscaloosa County Tax Assessor Doster McMullen, a Republican who served more than two decades in office, is staunchly against the proposed property tax increase and insisted in a phone interview with Patch that those in support of the measure actively work to make the other side "feel guilty" about opposing more funding for local schools.

McMullen, along with others opposed to the property tax increase, also took particular issue with TCS Superintendent Mike Daria's annual salary, which was $278,210 in fiscal year 2024, making him one of the highest-paid superintendents in the state.

"How can our superintendent get that big of a raise six months or a year before the tax increase?" he told Patch, referring to the raise Daria received from the previous fiscal year, which comes out to an extra $5,455 annually. "We're paying this guy over a quarter of a million dollars for running a failed company. If this were a company, he would have been gone a long time ago. It's shown no profit at all."

Those critical of Daria's salary also cited a raise of $55,869 he received in 2023.

Conversely, the TCS Board of Education is unanimously behind its superintendent and insists that he is more than worth the money due to his commitment to the community.

"Dr. Daria did not 'give himself a raise' as Steven Rumsey had stated on Facebook," Wilson told Patch of one comment made by a prominent Tuscaloosa businessman involved with Stop The Big Tax. "The Board voted on a renewed contract and unanimously approved the extension and the raise. Dr. Daria has never once approached me or any other Board member about his contract or his salary. He has never made any requests or demands."

Wilson went on to say the superintendent was a man of impeccable character and, despite many opportunities to go elsewhere for more money and likely easier systems, he has chosen to stay at TCS because he believes in the system, his Board and the work that he has done here.

"Many times to me he has stated that his work is not yet done here," Wilson said. "When you have a superintendent that is doing great work, whom the Board trusts and gets along with, who is respected immensely within the system and community and who is coveted by three other systems (each with greater property tax millage investments than TCS) and an institution of higher education — you make a contract offer to keep him here."

Allowing Daria to leave TCS was never an option for the TCS Board of Education, Wilson said, touting the progress that has been made over this time.

"Dr. Daria is basically a CEO of a company with a $100 million budget, 1,500 employees and 11,000 close stakeholders — children," he said. "He is paid below market value of someone of his caliber. The Board does not apologize for this raise."

Rumsey — a major player in the local economy who owns businesses like Tuscaloosa Waste Removal, Rumsey Properties, Rumsey Environmental, and others — also had sharp criticism of Daria's salary when compared to his interpretation of academic outcomes.

To his credit and using his own words, Rumsey indeed spends a small fortune advocating for causes close to his heart that don't benefit him financially.

"Daria runs that show and I feel like we had gotten 40 donations or whatever to that PAC, just folks who don't agree with the tax and think it's the wrong time," Rumsey recalled. "But we hadn't even expressed our views and a billboard went up and the system hit us in the jaw and called us greedy millionaires."

He also demanded an apology from TCS leadership for vilifying property owners opposed to the tax and said issues should have been discussed during sit-down meetings as opposed to social media and out in the public for all to see.

"They accuse us of being selfish and interested in profit but this has zero to do with our bottom line," Rumsey said, agreeing that he would make money if the proposed property tax increase passes. "I haven't run the numbers as to how the rents would go up per bedroom or unit when we have so many, but hypothetically let's say it's $12 a month per bedroom. I'm not going up $12, I'm going up $20."

Rumsey then questioned TCS leadership and others in recent days comparing Daria's pay to that of former Alabama football coach Nick Saban — a sizable investment that is expected to produce real results.

"With everything that I've read from the day [Daria] got there, he's got to be accountable for that and he's got to be responsible if he's the head guy," Rumsey told Patch. "The proficiency ratings are down from the day he started and I don't know how you can call Mike Daria 'Nick Saban' if the program is in worse shape than how he found it."

Despite the criticisms, Daria's leadership seems to have resonated with those on the school board, in the central office and the classroom.

His approach has not gone unnoticed by those outside of the system, either, with Daria named the Alabama (SSA)/Schneider Electric Superintendent of the Year in 2023. Sources have also said he has garnered interest for leadership positions in places like Hoover and even Shelton State Community College.

For Daria, though, Tuscaloosa has become home and he told Patch in a sit-down interview this week that he never planned on being in the position this long, figuring he would have moved on a long time ago.

"This city is pretty unique and awesome, so part of my being here is because it's the right place to raise a family," Daria said. "Why I like this school system is that it's a system committed to proving all kids are capable of learning and doing it at a high level. Typically, you see lower expectations placed on children based on demographics and this system is kicking that as a status quo mindset. I stayed longer than I thought I would stay. My plan was to be gone a couple of years ago but this system and this Board of Education is a united Board focused on all kids and that is both inspiring and motivating."

Security

Every week seems to bring new safety concerns for schools not just in the city of Tuscaloosa but across the country.

Tuscaloosa has fortunately avoided major tragedy but safety remains a top priority if you ask the TCS officials who are regularly dealing with threats that disrupt the school day and distract from learning.

School resource officers (SROs) are a big part of the strategic plan passed by the Board of Education for if the property tax passes, with $1.15 million being allocated to place school resource officers in every school.

For those unfamiliar with the dynamic, the salaries of school resource officers are paid by the City of Tuscaloosa, while overtime related to school activities — such as working security for sporting events — is reimbursed by Tuscaloosa City Schools.

TCS Chief School Financial Officer Jay Duke pointed out that the hourly rate for these officers has increased from around $25 an hour just a few years ago to anywhere from $57-$68 an hour today, which spurred the need for increased funding to cover the costs and ensure there are officers at every school function and in each school building every day.

"It's like transportation," he said of the cost. "I call that non-negotiable."

Detractors, however, have argued that this dynamic makes little sense when considering the city is already paying the officers working and should be covering overtime instead of TCS eating the costs and asking for more money so it can pay for more officers in schools.

The same opponents of the measure also questioned the need for officers expressed by TCS leadership, with one example provided to Patch being track meets — events that typically do not draw massive crowds like, say, a Friday night football game.

TCS leaders flatly reject such a possibility that they believe would only create potential security blind spots. They are also of the belief that the same people wondering if schools need SROs at every function would be the same to criticize the school system when something happens without an officer present who could have stopped it.

"We have to keep evaluating safety but it doesn't end at 3 p.m.," Daria told Patch. "We have after-school programs at almost every middle school. For our athletic programs, we have thousands of people on campus, so we do put police officers at games and board meetings because safety is our priority. When you have that many people on campus, we've got to assess that and we've used our police department to help us find how we can make crowds safe.

"That can be an area that if we have to reduce it we can but it reduces our safety presence or we have to go pull it from somewhere else so we can keep that level funding for safety," Daria added.

SPENDING

The massive influx of federal aid money for public schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic is credited with improving financially strapped schools across the country.

Local schools across the metro also benefited but still struggle to this day with revenue in the face of sustained inflation due to the pandemic. For example, the much larger Tuscaloosa County School System called for a similar property tax increase in 2023 with the revenue needed primarily for safety measures and facility expansions to meet the needs sparked by rapid population growth in places like Northport, Samantha and Lake View.

Heavily opposed by the Alabama Farmers Federation (ALFA) instead of by rental property owners and developers, the measure failed by a wide margin.

But as for how that pandemic money was spent by Tuscaloosa City Schools, it's also become a point of contention, particularly with those involved with the Stop The Big Tax PAC.

Tuscaloosa Patch had a meeting with several of these individuals, who spoke at length and offered their perspective on the condition that they not be named in this story.

When asked about their opposition, they explained that it wasn't about the tax increase so much as it was mismanagement of funding that has not produced the desired academic outcomes.

Stop The Big Tax insists that instead of using pandemic relief money to pay for "permanent" improvements to schools, such as security systems, nearly all of the money was spent on hiring for non-essential positions that, once the pandemic aid money ran out, would still need to be paid.

School nurses were one position they mentioned, questioning the necessity of having multiple on staff at one city school. Interventionists — education professionals who help students with academic, behavioral or learning challenges — were also discussed as a possible financial strain on the system as it seeks additional revenue.

When asked about these alleged redundancies, Daria said the costs in education are not only going up but the cost of doing it the way it needs to be done is, too.

"I use the example that there was a young lady in a wheelchair connected to a medical device with a nurse on each side," he told Patch. "Years ago, that child wouldn't even be in public education and you have two nurses who are there full time. They go with her so she can go on field trips."

As for the spending of pandemic aid money, TCS leadership said the accusations were true.

It's also something those in the central office wear as a badge of honor.

"We take that as a high compliment," TCS Chief School Financial Officer Jay Duke told Patch. "We didn't buy permanent things that had to be kept up later. We put 95% of that money into the classrooms, interventionists, and so on and we gained a lot of savings because of it. We still have it in the bank today. [The pandemic] started as a health event and they said you can use this for nurses."

Daria also spoke to the regulations governing how the money was to be spent.

"We had to get approval on every item of that expense before we could draw the funds," he said. "But we did add nurses and we did add interventionists because we needed them in response to COVID."

In regards to overall spending, Stop The Big Tax and others have accused the school system of using taxpayer money to advocate for a vote in favor of the property tax increase. The law prohibits school systems from doing so, making for a precarious situation when school systems need to get the message out.

"The law allows us to use public funds to educate our community and we have done just that," Daria said in response to the accusations. "Everything we've done, we've run through a lawyer who is versed in that to make sure we're not blurring the line or crossing the line so everything we have done is to educate the community. It's our responsibility to tell the public what this means if it passes or doesn't. We can't tell them to vote yes or no and we have not."

Academic Outcomes

Stop The Big Tax told Patch that academic outcomes, relative to the money already being spent, is at the heart of their opposition to the proposed property tax increase, along with the timing and the size of the increase.

Other critiques were offered of the school system's use of the block schedule and elementary proficiency scores that they insist show outcomes have been in sharp decline for some time.

Stop The Big Tax also provided an independently compiled data set that they claim shows this, with the figures going back to the 2016-2017 school year — the year that Mike Daria was hired as superintendent.

"We need to get back to the basics," former Tuscaloosa County Tax Assessor Doster McMullen told Patch. "A child needs to know how to read, write and do arithmetic when they get out of grammar school. Then it gets easier when you get to middle school and high school. We need to get back to education and quit all this other stuff."

Daria disagreed with McMullen's approach, saying that the goal of school system leaders is to keep their students in school as much as possible.

"The extracurriculars I hear pushback on are designed to keep our students connected to our school," he said. "The more our students are in the buildings or connected to our buildings they are not out idle doing something else."

TCS Director of Public Relations Lydia Seabol Avant expounded on this idea, saying that art and music are incredibly important, especially in the early grades. In fact, it's something the school system wants to expand year-round.

"You only get art one semester and music one semester, it alternates, but our music instruction can actually aid the ability of the brain for kids to learn how to read," she explained. "Research has shown kids who have art and music instruction do better academically, but also in the high school grades some of the students come to school because they love art or they love being in the band or love the football team. That is their 'why' that opens the door to learning and gets them to school every day and on to graduation."

One school held up as an example of declining proficiency was Southview Elementary, with the data set showing its math proficiency score falling from 35.40% in 2016-17 to 9.13% in 2022-23.

Eastwood Middle School is reflected in this data with a similar score that reports that only 8.38% of students were proficient in math during the last school year.

Avant said the 2016-2019 numbers presented in the data set from Stop The Big Tax used a different test or assessment than the ACAP, which has been used since 2021 for elementary and middle schools.

She also provided TCS data that showed Southview Elementary's math proficiency was currently 23%, marking a 20% increase from 2021 to 2024.

Some of the data for high schools presented by Stop The Big Tax was reportedly pulled from the state report card from the Alabama Department of Education.

Central High School, which received a 'D' from the Alabama Department of Education during the last school year, was the point of focus for the opposition group that highlighted only a 4.79% proficiency in math for the 2022-2023 school year and a graduation rate of 79.35%.

TCS officials questioned the data set and said the graduation rate for this year at CHS was 81.57%.

When discussing potential solutions, one member of the opposition suggested that the low ACT scores and a low graduation rate reflected that students coming from the West End — a predominantly Black part of the city — may not all want to go to college and might be better served by putting more of an emphasis on connecting students to good-paying jobs for local employers like Mercedes-Benz U.S. International in Vance as a way to incentivize their educational growth.

TCS Director of Public Relations Lydia Seabol Avant pointed out, however, that the average Alabama ACT proficiency percentage is also quite low — 24% for English Language Arts and 14% for Math.

"While we are not proud of our proficiency scores and recognize that we have a significant ways to go in terms of improvement," she told Patch, "our average ACT scores as a system are 25% proficiency on the ACT in [English Language Arts] and 18% proficiency in Math."

She also said that Central has the highest percentage of dual enrollment students for its three high schools thanks in large part to funding through Elevate Tuscaloosa.

Avant then mentioned LeAnna Roberts, who was 15 years old when she graduated with her Associates Degree from Shelton State Community College and an International Baccalaureate Diploma from Central High School in 2021.

"Geography and where a student lives should not dictate the path a student follows," TCS Chief School Financial Officer Jay Duke said. "We want our students to have choices. If Mercedes is their choice, it shouldn't be because there is not another option. It should be because we prepared them. We're not where we need to be in academic outcomes across the board, but we're on the right path. The signs say 'Go Vote.' Even in our presentations, we show both sides and how much it would cost.

"We've suffered historically from low expectations for students, typically our most underserved," he added. "It's a high expectation for all and that includes students in the West End."

Loose Ends

One of the questions raised by opponents of the property tax focuses on the date of the election and why it wasn't placed on the November general election or the March 2025 municipal election ballot in Tuscaloosa.

"We've got to get the City Council to run it through because they had to pass a resolution that allowed the citizens of Tuscaloosa to vote on this," TCS Board President Eric Wilson told Patch. "And there was no way they were going to allow that on the municipal election ballot. The other reason we wanted it sooner rather than later, the tax will not go into effect for a year, so if we waited until March, then that would have basically been October of 2026 instead of October 2025 for when we start collecting so it pushed us back a whole calendar year by waiting six months."

As for the general election in November, there was debate over the risk of putting it on the ballot with other amendments and resolutions. Despite believing that a higher turnout favors the property tax increase, he said the primary worry was the measure being buried on the ballot.

Where business interests are concerned, such as those held by some in the Stop The Big Tax PAC, another question has been raised about the desire to build charter schools to compete with financially struggling public schools.

According to New Schools Alabama, a charter school advocacy group, a charter school is a tuition-free public school that is independently run.

New Schools Alabama says public charter schools receive 100% of federal funds, 100% of state funds and the equivalent of 10 mills of local funds for each child enrolled at the public charter school.

While the research is still inconclusive, according to one Georgetown University professor, fears persist regarding charter schools siphoning off the most advantaged students and undermining political and community support for the public system.

"We've got a charter school that is slated to open at Stillman College and I've met with the leaders," Daria said. "We welcome it. It's coming to Alabama, so you won't hear opposition from any of us. Our focus is to just keep getting better. If charter comes in and we're not where we need to be, shame on us. We just have to focus on getting better."

Developer Ron Turner is also opposed to the property tax increase for the aforementioned reasons like the size of the increase, the poor timing of the referendum and academic outcomes.

He is also an outspoken advocate for charter schools and has told Tuscaloosa Patch on numerous occasions that they can be used as a form of good-faith competition that would result in public school systems being left with no choice but to improve or risk losing students to a competing charter school.

Turner, who is passionate about education and health care issues, has insisted this is not to undermine the two public school systems in Tuscaloosa County but to provide a quality choice for local families.

Tuscaloosa Patch previously reported on his dream of building a new charter school in Northport to serve as an alternative to aging schools like Collins-Riverside Intermediate School.

Sources with the Tuscaloosa City Board of Education also told Patch that Turner on several occasions has expressed interest in purchasing the former Oak Hill School property near Bowers Park.

Turner confirmed this to Patch but insisted he was working on behalf of a behavioral health provider interested in purchasing the school, which served special needs students until it was closed in 2007 to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The school has since sat vacant apart from being temporarily rented to the Tuscaloosa Police Department during an extensive renovation of its headquarters.

While Turner might not be eying building out a new charter school on the Oak Hill property, he still lamented the money spent maintaining a property that does not serve a single student.

"This [opposition to the proposed property tax] isn't about the money," he told Patch. "It's about the kids."

Despite the competing narratives and interests in the downhill run to the Sept. 24 special election, both sides insist that local children and the quality of their education are their primary concerns.

"Strong schools equal strong communities," Daria said on the eve of the vote when asked what he would tell those who are opposed to the proposed tax increase because they don't have students in the school system. "When our school system is a premier school system, it means we are giving the workforce a premier workforce. At DCH, we have folks who are highly qualified and in all these career areas, the progress of a community can not surpass the quality of its school system. It impacts everything. It impacts work force, crime, the progress of an entire community and home values."

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