FAIRHOPE, Ala. - The long-awaited $25,000 study on the feasibility of creating a public school system in Fairhope separate from the county will be revealed at 5 p.m., Monday, Sept. 13, during a presentation by its author, Birmingham educational finance consultant Ira Harvey, at the Civic Center auditorium.

Initially scheduled for completion in May, several interim events, including passage of a county sales tax for education and the economic impacts from the oil spill, delayed production of the study commissioned by the City Council in January, said Councilwoman Debbie Quinn, who chaired a Fairhope Schools Financial Feasibility Study Committee that met once in February.

A copy of the report will be available Tuesday at the Fairhope Public Library and City Hall, but advance copies of the taxpayer-funded study were not made available to the public or media as of press time.

A public records request filed by the Fairhope Courier with the city clerk’s office was referred to Quinn, who apparently had the only draft copy of the taxpayer-funded study in Fairhope.

“We do not have a copy at City Hall, so I cannot send (the Courier) a copy,” the clerk wrote to Quinn Sept. 1. “We give the ‘media’ copies of our draft ordinances and resolutions. This document would be the same. I sent (the Courier) a copy of your e-mail stating (a copy of the report) would not be available until Sept. 14, 2010, but I would like to know why it has to wait before the presentation is done by Dr. Harvey to become public record.”

The council adopted a new policy in early 2008 to provide “council packets” to the media prior to council meetings, instead of the day after, following requests for that information by the Courier and its reporting of those requests and their initial denial by the city.

Those packets contain draft ordinances and other documents to be considered at council meetings. Cities such as Mobile have long provided that information in advance of council meetings – and others like Daphne post them on their website in advance.

Quinn did not respond to either the clerk or the Courier regarding the public record status of the draft report, and why she would not provide a copy to the city or media in advance of the meeting, except to state the report was not complete.

She explained during several recent e-mails, however, that Harvey was revising the report as late as Wednesday this week based on new information received from the Baldwin County Board of Education.

“Dr. Harvey will be bringing copies for everyone on the committee and liaisons,” Quinn stated Wednesday. “Everyone will have a copy in front of them at the time of the meeting.”

The Monday presentation of the study will be made by Harvey to the council and the school study committee, which consists of Terri Bishop, Mike Keating, Jim Ketchum, Mike Lucci and Amanda VanderHayden, Quinn said.

The presentation will follow a 4 p.m. work session of the council and just prior to its regular meeting at 6 p.m.

Quinn said she has been briefing council and committee members about certain results of the study as Harvey has provided them to her.

“I don’t feel that anyone on the committee or council has gone without an opportunity for some kind of update,” she wrote Wednesday. “Since the information tends to change as the (county school board) keeps updating their numbers, the final copy is not ready for public review, but there are an abundance of legal, and how funding is allocated in this state, type questions that don’t change, and that information is what is being conveyed to the members.”