Baldwin Council Removes Social Media Coordinator From FY26 Tax-Rate Options

Baldwin City Council unanimously removed a proposed social media coordinator from the city’s FY26 millage-rate options at a Sept. 29, 2025, special called meeting. Councilwoman Nancy Lehman made the motion to strike the position, and the meeting minutes record a 4-0 vote. The action narrowed the tax-rate alternatives being considered by the council; it did not, on its own, document that the position had been eliminated from every possible city budget discussion.

The decision matters because millage-rate choices shape the property-tax framework residents face and carry spending assumptions alongside them. Removing the coordinator from those options separated a proposed communications job from a consequential part of the FY26 tax-rate process. For taxpayers and residents seeking a clear answer about staffing and city communications, the central unresolved question is whether Baldwin intended to leave the role aside entirely or consider it through another budget path.

The minutes show that the position was first brought into the special meeting’s business through an agenda amendment to consider adding a social media coordinator. Later in that same meeting, the council acted in the opposite direction on the millage-rate options, voting to strike it. The sequence is important: the record documents consideration of the job before documenting its removal from the tax-rate alternatives, rather than showing a completed hiring or a final standalone budget appropriation.

Council’s recorded rationale connected the decision to other staffing and service arrangements: the addition of a finance director and the possibility of outsourcing building and planning, with City Hall staff described as able to handle communications. Lehman made the motion, and the four members voting supported it. The minutes do not preserve a separate argument in favor of retaining the coordinator in the millage-rate options, nor do they identify a resident, employee or applicant affected by the proposal.

Two actions are established by the special-meeting minutes: an agenda amendment concerning the proposed coordinator and the subsequent 4-0 vote to remove the job from FY26 millage-rate options. What remains unestablished is equally significant. The minutes do not show final approval of a separate FY26 budget addition, a funding source outside those options, a hire, or a start date. They also do not show whether the city later abandoned, revised or revived the proposal.

The next meaningful public development would be a later Baldwin record that states how the FY26 budget and millage-rate process were ultimately handled and whether the coordinator position was implemented, amended or dropped. Until such a record appears, residents can accurately say the council removed the proposed job from the listed millage-rate options on Sept. 29. They cannot conclude from these minutes alone that the role received separate final budget approval or that anyone was hired to fill it.