ELBERTA, Ala. — During Tuesday’s regular meeting, Elberta Town Council members shared positive comments about the Baldwin County School Board’s recent announcement of plans to add an Elberta high school.

“This was a historic thing for Elberta,” Mayor Pro-Tem Jim Hamby said.

That announcement was made during an education summit in Daphne, in which the BOE unveiled a $350 million capital improvement project that would either improve or add schools in every community in the county. To fund such a project, voters would need to approve an 8 mil increase on their property taxes in a referendum next spring.

“We’re going to have to push to be able to get it,” Mayor Marvin Williams said Tuesday.

“If the referendum passes, the high school would be up and running for the 2016-2017 school year,” Hamby added.

The discussion included recognition of efforts by Hamby and Councilman Michael Hudson to lobby the school board for an Elberta high school.

“I would like to applaud Miachel and Jim for what they did,” Council member Betty Wood said.

Those efforts included hosting a town-hall meeting, in which area residents packed Town Hall as town leaders stated their case to the BOE.

“We played good cop, bad cop kind of,” Hudson joked.

Those efforts resulted in the school board deciding to make the current Elberta Elementary into a K-6 school and the current Elberta Middle into a high school that would house grades 7-12.

“I would rather have our kids going to school in our community in an older building,” Hamby said.