Cashing in on London’s future

BLOG #545: The mayor needs lots of money to pay for his many Grow London plans but he was thwarted by city council this week in trying to raise some of it by in effect selling a piece of London Hydro. So here are some alternative ways of raising cash; feel free to suggest a few of your own.

Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011 – London

One reason Mayor Joe Fontana was so keen to see a deal between London Hydro and Edmonton-owned EPCOR was that he needs the money, lots of it, to pay for his grandiose Grow London projects.

At last count from the city treasurer’s office, the total cost to the city of the various projects proposed to get the Forest City moving and help create the 10,000 jobs Mr. Fontana promised during his election campaign is $798.1 million. That doesn’t sound like much when you write it out that way but looks like a whole lot more when it appears this way: $798,100,000.00.

Either way it’s more money than the City of London has saved up.

So if not from the deep pockets of a Western Canadian energy giant, where is Mr. Fontana going to get that kind of dough? He has already thought of an annual levy of one per cent of property taxes, which could start in 2012. But the look on his face was priceless (unfortunately) when he learned the levy would only generate about $5 million in cash per year.

Let’s see, 798.1 divided by 5 equals almost 160, which is how many years it would take to raise the building fund that way. Clearly that not fast enough for a guy who is already in his 60s.

So herewith we freely offer some more suggestions. You may have a few of your own which I encourage you to freely contribute as well in the interests of good citizenship.

     -- Head Tax: This sort of thing isn’t known for prolonging political careers, but just for the record if each of the 360,000 residents of London contributed $2,216.94, the mayor could have the bulldozers at work before Christmas. Or perhaps we could do this on the layaway plan, a little now and a little each month (it would only be $170.53 per person per month), and be ready for next Christmas.

     -- London Savings Bonds: The Canadian government has done this to raise cash, so has the Ontario government. So why can’t we have Forest City Bonds which citizens could buy, perhaps on the payroll deduction plan? It would be the perfect Christmas present.

     -- Grow London Shares: Or we could sell shares in our future, allowing citizens to buy a little piece of tomorrow. As an inducement, shareholders would be allowed inside the construction fences to watch their investments grow. Free hardhats, too.

Admittedly those suggestions are pretty conventional and likely some dour souls on city council would find ways to oppose them. Some of them are admittedly risky too, some punitive. What we need here is out of the box thinking.

     -- Opportunity Lottery: Each week Londoners combined spend millions buying lottery tickets or playing the slots. The city does get a little piece of this action – about $4 million a year in cash from the Western Fair slots and quite a bit gets kicked back in Trillium Grants to various local charities. But that’s just skimming the gravy. Our own lottery, though, would have us slicing the beef right off the roast. Is this a city of opportunity or what? And we could have some creative prizes – like an overpass named in your honour or the key to the executive washroom of the new city hall or the right to yell whenever you wanted, “Everyone out of my pool,” at the proposed downtown beach. This could be huge.

     -- Drill for Oil: This is not so far-fetched. In the late 1880s quite a bit of money was raised from wealthy citizens for an oil drilling play near the Forks of the Thames. The whole scheme went bust when oil wasn’t found – but this doesn’t mean it’s not there. That’s the thing about oil, you’ve got to drill and drill and drill to find it so it’s just a matter of us looking harder. EPCOR could probably help with that.

     -- Sell Assets: I know what you’re thinking, isn’t this the idea that got the mayor’s knuckles rapped by council this past week? Yes it is, but only because he wasn’t creative enough. How about this? We could sell City Hall and move the whole civic operation to join the Occupy campers and their tents in Victoria Park. That would certainly get city council closer to the people.