New town of Perdido Beach

PERDIDO - For more than a year, residents have been working on incorporation, and after a vote, it looks like that will be happening. Voters in Perdido Beach decided Tuesday night to incorporate into Baldwin County's newest city. The vote was 192 in favor of incorporation and 113 against it. The vote stops any possible effort to annex the area into Orange Beach.

"Over those 100 years we've developed a self identity and we're self reliant people. We do for ourselves and make decisions for ourselves and this is part of the reason for wanting incorporation is that we want to make decisions and determine how development will occur in this community," said Patsy Parker.

"We've had other communities, Orange Beach, Elberta, interested in annexing us into other areas, but folks just decided we'd rather have it this way," said resident Doug Creighton.

In Tuesday night's vote of 192 to 113, residents of Perdido Beach decided that they wanted to be incorporated as their own town. An area marked green shows the new town limits for Perdido Beach.

"The events that led up to the vote yesterday was a poll of the community asking them what they wanted in their future," said Perdido Beach Property Owner's Association President Robert Gross.

Gross says he and other community leaders aren't anticipating any big changes in the future.

"We're not looking at creating huge new sources of income, we're not looking at changing development priorities and so forth," said Gross.

Now, town officials will have to set a date for a municipal election, which is projected to be some time this fall.

"At that point in time, whoever will be running the town, whoever is elected mayor and council members will be determining ordinances and so forth," said Gross.

Gross says he and other community members realize that things in Baldwin county are changing quickly, but most of them want Perdido beach to remain, as much as possible, the way it is today.