ORANGE BEACH — Back in the day — well, not too far back — condominium developers would seek permission to build bigger, taller and more of their complexes than Orange Beach zoning regulations would perhaps allow.

In negotiations to extend these privileges, the City of Orange Beach would ask for concessions from the builders in the form of access to the beach for city vehicles or improvements to some town amenity like the Backcountry Trail.

They were regularly referred to as “public benefits.”

“I was there in 2004 and 2005, whenever, and if you remember the tradeoffs back then were called for the public use,” Mayor Tony Kennon said.

One of the crown jewels from that period of bartering for more density and towering, opulent condos is the Sea, Sand, Stars museum at Orange Beach Elementary School.

Brett-Robertson came up with an initial $1.5 million after asking for a pass on some zoning regulations for Phoenix West — and later had to kick in a little more — and the city came up with about $300,000, according to Kennon.

“That’s why we agreed to that,” Kennon said. “It would be a shared use for our kids, other school kids and the public.”

The first two parts of that equation have worked swimmingly. Orange Beach students use the facility regularly. Busloads of students from Baldwin, Mobile and Escambia counties, and even from Escambia, Fla., field trip there on a regular basis.

“The public use of that building was for it to be open when school was not in,” Kennon said. “Once they got it, they never allowed us to use it. I guess I don’t know why we haven’t pushed it harder than we’ve pushed it. And I think there’s a lot of people in town that want to know why we aren’t pushing it.”

They, Kennon said, being the Baldwin County School Board.

School system spokesman, Terry Wilhite, says funding for qualified personnel to staff the museum for public use is hard to find in the cash-strapped county school budget.

“It’s difficult to provide funding for teachers throughout the school year,” Wilhite said. “There’s not enough funding to provide for adequate teachers in schools in Orange Beach and throughout the county during the regular school year. It’s even more difficult to find and pay a teacher who will staff this facility during the school year.”

Simply finding volunteers, Wilhite said, is not the answer to the funding question.

“Finding the person who is willing and able, qualified, to manage the facility is also very difficult,” Wilhite said. “There’s a lot of sophisticated equipment, there’s a lot of expensive equipment that’s here. It is foremost an educational facility for children. It’s a wonderful facility, and if we can we certainly want to extend that to the community.”

Kennon said the city has offered to help with those issues from the beginning.

“There are no excuses,” Kennon said. “Number one, there was already an agreement and they reneged on it. That was the agreement that it would be open to the public during non-school hours.

“Secondly, we’ve offered to fund the staff, we’ve offered to take care of the bills and any costs outside of school hours.”

Kennon said city leaders who approved the Phoenix West planned unit development would have balked at passing it if the museum was not going to truly be a public benefit.

“We would have never, ever accepted that or moved in that direction if the people of Orange Beach and the City of Orange Beach was not going to benefit,” Kennon said. “We’ve been fighting this battle forever. It just really bothers me because this is a public benefit. When all that was going on the definition of a public benefit was for the City of Orange Beach and the people of Orange Beach.”

Sea, Sand and Stars, which first opened in 2007, is also a popular field trip destination for more than 4,000 students a year in Baldwin, Mobile and Escambia counties, as well as schools in Escambia County, Fla.

The Sea, Sand and Stars center is integrated into each grade’s curriculum all year long, and students learn and apply the scientific method through hands-on study of subjects like astronomy, botany and native plants, conservation and preservation, marine biology, geology and meteorology. Lessons are all cross-referenced with national and state mathematics, science and technology standards.

Grant money from BP to the Coastal Baldwin Educational Enrichment Foundation allowed for some special programs during the summers of 2012-14, but otherwise public access has been limited.

“It’s bizarre,” Kennon said. “It’s almost like this is ours and we’re going to show you we’re in control. It’s a control thing.

“The problem with that is they agreed to make it public. That was the whole purpose of the contribution. Public use.”