“The mayor would like to look into the feasibility of constructing golf cart paths,” Community Development Director Kit Alexander said. “Shared paths between golf carts, bicyclists and pedestrians. This is the first attempt to look at the feasibility of constructing multi-modal paths including golf carts on roadways that have a speed limit greater than 25 mph.”

Also, during the dual meeting on Nov. 5, the city formalized phase two of an agreement with Island Fiber to help the company bring fiber technology and high-speed internet to neighborhoods in Orange Beach.

During the town hall meeting, Mayor Tony Kennon said the city will have to move forward on a new golf cart ordinance to address growing numbers and concerns of the carts throughout the city. The city is writing the ordinance to comply with state law which states golf carts can’t be operated on roads with speed limits of more than 25 mph, must be driven by a licensed driver and must have lights and blinkers.

“Our goal is an ordinance that will be minimal in nature, to accomplish what state law requires us to do,” Kennon said at the Oct. 1 meeting. “What we think will happen is you will have to retrofit the lights and all that stuff. It’s about $650, average, to retrofit golf cart to make it so-called street legal which is not really a correct term. That is probably going to have to happen. We’ll have a phase-in period, a grace period. But eventually, every golf cart will have to meet those standards, be inspected and permitted.”

This new study will cover the entire city but Kennon said the city has more leeway on city-maintained streets than it does on state highways like Canal Road from the Wharf to State Route 161 and 161 south from there to the beach.

“My point is everywhere we see an opportunity to create a golf cart path, Marina Road may be one because it’s a city street,” Kennon said. “That may be something we can do. We may be able to come in and widen that to 10 feet and declare it a golf cart path then that’s what we’re going to do. I promise you we are going to attack in every way we can to create arteries for golf carts to go anywhere they want to go.”

Kennon also said that Canal Road was another possibility from Doc’s Seafood Shack all the way to Bear Point because the city recently took over maintenance of that portion of what used to be Alabama 180. It’s still under state control from Doc’s west as is all of Alabama 161.

“We will have to have the state’s permission to create a golf cart path on 161 north and south because that’s all state right of way,” Kennon said.

The study, Alexander said, will determine what’s required for the golf cart paths along both city and state roadways in Orange Beach.

“This is all brand new to us so we need to research what the appropriate width would be, we’ll have to look into where there are utilities,” Alexander said. “Just basically become familiar with the rights of way that we would look at and what the criteria and specifications would be.

To pay the loan back, Island Fiber will then make owe the city $5 a month per customer and make quarterly payments of those fees until the full amount is repaid to the city. Those payments will begin on May 1st.

As part of the agreement, Island Fiber is to provide a construction schedule and set up public meetings to inform residents of the availability of the new service and when to expect it in their neighborhoods.

“Island Fiber will work with the city to plan a marketing strategy to generate sufficient interest among target constituents to meet the necessary subscribership levels in order to make the construction of the project economically viable,” the agreement states. “Island Fiber agrees to develop verbal presentations and written communications describing the proposed services and the benefits of the project to the target constituents.”