FAIRHOPE – City officials could vote soon on a plan to establish the Dyas Triangle property as a municipal park.
The Fairhope City Council voted Monday, July 26, to approve a boundary survey on the property near the intersection of Alabama 104, U.S. 98 and Scenic 98.
Mayor Sherry Sullivan said a next step will be to ask the council to approve a resolution allowing negotiations between the city and Fairhope Single Tax Colony.
The city will also have to conduct a topographical survey of the property and a survey of the trees on the site, Sullivan said.
“The cost came in pretty high. It’s close to $250,000 for a tree survey, a topo and a boundary survey. So tonight, on the agenda is just the boundary survey at $16,000,” Sullivan said at the council meeting.
She said the city is working with other agencies to find ways to conduct the topographical study and tree survey. Some possible methods include using drones, volunteers from the Boy Scouts and Auburn University.
The mayor said some partial information is available, but dates to the 1960s and 1970s and will have to be updated.
Michelle Melton of the Fairhope Environmental Advisory Board said that under the proposal, the city would deed the land to the Fairhope Single Tax Colony. The colony would give the parcel back to the city with provisions that would require it to always be used as a park.
“The first thing that the city would do would probably quit-claim it over to them and then the Fairhope Environmental Advisory Board would work with them to try to get some deed restrictions in that deed when they convey it back to the city as parkland,” Melton said.
She said that if the land is dedicated as a park, the property cannot be used for another purpose without a vote of the public.
“If 100 years from now, if the public feels otherwise, we won’t be here, but they’ll vote on it and do what they want, so and hopefully it will be for the betterment of the city,” Melton said.
Councilman Corey Martin said the process of deeding land to the colony and then giving it back with provisions has been used in the past and has been upheld in state courts.
“There’s been a precedent set in constitutional law that allows a deeded land that’s parklands for a single tax is concerned, that that holds ground perpetuity-wise,” Marti said. “It’s been tested.”
Councilman Jimmy Conyers said the exchange with the Single Tax Colony is a way to keep the property under city control, but to ensure that the site remains a park.
“I think the plan to deed to Single Tax and then put the restrictions in place and deed it back is a good in-between from the city just operating it as a park on its own or a conservation easement’s kind of splitting the difference,” Conyers said. “Not perpetual but also more restrictive than something that couldn’t just be changed by a new council.”
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