Orange Beach’s city council met last week to discuss its regular agenda, but Mayor Tony Kennon began with an idea to help support students affected by the Gulf Shores Mardi Gras parade incident.

“With the band tragedy, there were considerable costs, not just the human pull, but the costs of the instruments damaged,” Kennon said. “Would y’all like to contribute to this and pay for all of the instruments that were damaged?”

Several council members responded that there were multiple efforts underway to help pay for instrument costs, including a locally started GoFundMe page, but Kennon explained the reasoning behind his idea.

“The reason I was thinking, I don’t think we can give to individuals, but if we paid for the instruments, that would free up more money for them to use the account to go to folks that might be short of insurance co-pays and that sort of thing,” Kennon said.

Councilman Jerry Johnson liked Kennon’s idea.

“I think that could be a great suggestion,” Johnson said. “ I would support that.”

Kennon and the council asked city staff to do more research on the issue and have something put together for them for a future meeting.

Beach Road project

Kennon told the council the city was planning to have the Beach Road improvements finished by Friday, March 10.

“Hopefully, our Beach Road extravaganza road project will be done within another week or so, by next Friday,” Kennon said. “And, hopefully, over time, we’ll see the benefit of the new layout. We’ve had no shortage of constructive comments and criticisms on that project.”

City Administrator Ken Grimes told the council there had been a lot of questions and confusion about the changes, but said with the final touches those issues should be alleviated.

“We’re hoping confusion will decrease as the final striping goes in,” Grimes said. “When the striping is going down, signals don’t work as they normally would when they’re synced up, but we’re hoping to see that completely done.”

Grimes also announced Cotton Bayou Beach could be re-opened soon by state officials.

“The state is planning to open Cotton Bayou Beach back up for a much as three weeks because the contractor is not line up yet to take on the project,” Grimes said. “That’s underway to open it back up with the new entrance area.”

Grimes said city staff was unaware what the new beach access would look like, though it could be done with gravel.

“There’s not a lot of details,” Grimes said. “It’s state decisions from state agencies, the state Department of Conservation, etc.”