ORANGE BEACH, Ala. - The time for help with traffic is now, Orange Beach officials are saying. And they believe that fix is a bridge over Wolf Bay.

After a nightmarish three days of rain on a holiday weekend, a clarion call went up to Montgomery to finally get busy on helping ease the tourist season congestion.

“I can’t make it happen without them wanting it to happen,” Mayor Tony Kennon said. “It’s just bizarre that we’ve done everything possible on the check list to get a bridge built and it’s just not happening.”

Kennon has said about half the money is raised to fund what is estimated to be a $40 million project. It would extend Alabama 161 from the south side of Wolf Bay near Doc's Seafood Shack to the north bank of Wolf Bay near Barber Marina, according to premliminary projections.

“I don’t want to go into specifics because it’s all verbal,” Kennon said. “The state knows who all the players are, but I can’t put anybody on the spot. Everybody knows Mr. (George) Barber wants to help pay for the bridge and local governments. Between all of us out there I think over half the bridge is paid for. I may be wrong until I get something in writing, but that’s been the commitment forever.”

And they are not even sure of that cost.

“We haven’t done any engineering,” Kennon said. “We think it’s a $40 million project. That’s the number that’s being thrown around.”

Numbers he can be sure of are the taxes his city sends to the state. In 2012 Orange Beach sent almost $7 million in lodging taxes collected and of just more than $24 million in sales taxes collections, $9.3 million went to Montgomery.

That cash cow would become endangered if visitors are left sitting in traffic during their vacations.

“This is a tax revenue machine,” Kennon said. “I doubt anybody anywhere in the country with 5,000 residents generates the amount of tax revenue we generate and send to Montgomery.”

Keeping the visitors happy is what drives that machine.

“This is a customer service issue,” Kennon said. “Common business sense says when you have a machine that is growing like ours is growing, it just makes sense that you can invest in that machine.

“To invest in infrastructure would be something that anybody with any degree of common sense would know this is a no-nonsense business investment. You grow the infrastructure commensurate with the growth of the community.”

And the infrastructure fix that makes the most sense to Kennon and members of the City Council is the Wolf Bay Bridge.

Gov. Robert Bentley squashed the cross-island connector that would have connected the Foley Beach Express to Alabama 182, beach road, through Gulf State Park. Kennon says with the environmental issues, likely lawsuits and permitting that fix could take 10 years or longer.

Another would be to widen Canal Road, an unpalatable solution and business killer in Kennon’s eyes.

“The widening of Canal Road is about a three-and-a-half- to four-year project,” Kennon said. “Can you image what it would do to the city of Orange Beach to have Canal Road torn up for four summers? I can’t imagine what it will do to our business for four years.”

Which brings city officials back to the bridge.

“This is a three-year project that needs to be done, has no effect on us and our money-making machine for the state, so let’s move forward,” Kennon said. “The bridge being built does not affect us in any way during the construction phase.”

“The top of our list has to be Wolf Bay Bridge,” Councilman Al Bradley said. “Between the landowner up there and the city, we will cover most of the cost of that bridge. The state doesn’t have to chip in that much. But the state has to build it. I don’t know what we can do to make that happen.”

Kennon wants the state to take the $2.7 million the city paid the state in 2006 for Canal Road rights-of-way for the expansion project and put it toward the bridge as seed money.

Now his efforts are aimed at getting all interested parties together to find out how to make a Wolf Bay Bridge happen.

“Until we can get everybody to the table, and that’s what I’m trying to do right now, get everybody that’s a part of this to the table,” Kennon said. “I’ve rallied some support. Our state delegation is on board with us. Our county commissioners seem to be on board. Robert Craft is on board and John Koniar has always been on board.”

Kennon says local government officials like Craft in Gulf Shores and Koniar in Foley and citizens need to prod the state into action.

“We’ve got to get rowdy and folks in Orange Beach need to get on the phone,” he said. “We ought to be able to make it work.”