It’s official: the city of Athens will vote Aug. 25 on whether to raise property taxes by 12 mills and borrow $74 million to overhaul the entire Athens City Schools system.

What’s not official is the outcome of that vote, but Athens Superintendent Trey Holladay said Tuesday he feels “confident” in how the vote will turn out based on research and feedback he’s received from citizens.

“We feel like we’ve done our homework because the plan was built by the people of the community,” Holladay said. “I hope people realize this is what the people wanted, not what the school system wanted.”

Now, as city residents prepare to vote, Holladay said his department is not ramping up any kind of campaign efforts to push for “yes” votes. The work on their end is done and was done quite some time ago. Two years ago, members of an exploratory committee began polling and gathering data from the citizens of Athens on what it would take for a majority to approve such a vote.

First, citizens needed to see the need for updated facilities, Holladay said. One of the biggest negatives the city faces in regard to future economic development is the outdated status of its school system. If Athens wants to compete with Madison and Huntsville for the influx of people coming to work for Remington and Carpenter, it needed a competitive school system, Holladay said.

Another community benefit will be the addition of public storm shelters at the new and refurbished school buildings, Holladay said. Adding the shelters into the plan was a direct result of community input, he said. With that addition, attitudes among those polled became increasingly favorable toward accepting the tax increase, Holladay said.

“(Feedback) was very positive and overwhelmingly (in favor of) Plan A,” Holladay said. “I feel like that’s done exactly what the people asked.”

Parent groups and some staff members are now campaigning for acceptance of the capital plan, but Holladay said those were “grassroots” efforts and there is no organized campaign on behalf of the school system to push for votes. The superintendent said he’s meeting with citizens to answer questions and reiterate that the tax, if approved, is not permanent and will only fund physical buildings.

Athens resident Ralph Diggins told the city council last Thursday he felt a lot of information on the deal has yet to surface. Diggins called for a town hall meeting on the issue and council president Jimmy Gill responded that Diggins was more than welcome to organize one. Holladay said Tuesday he was willing to meet with anyone, whether they are for or against the tax.

Now that the Athens City Council has signed off on the vote, all that’s left for Holladay to do is watch and wait while repeating the same lines: this plan is what Athens needs to move forward. Without it, there will still have to be something done to the old school buildings, but to what extent or how much it could possibly cost, Holladay couldn’t say.

“I don’t know of anything else we can do to show people we need it,” Holladay said. “I don’t have a plan if we lose. We only have one school that’s not at capacity or over and that’s Cowart.”