Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
Pincott might not have done his research, but that's not necessarily a bad idea. Let's say we take the $52 million per year, and dedicate it for 30 years to paying off a capital project. The Alberta Capital Finance Authority uses the province's (excellent) credit rating to get a better debt deal for municipalities. The current rate for a 30 year loan from them is 3.89%.*
Long story short if we committed that 52 million to debt payments, we could borrow $911 million right now. (assuming we have that much debt room, even if we don't I bet if the mayor made it a public campaign the province would fold).
That would get us a good start, and would probably qualify us for matching funds. Once the north/se line is started, it'll get political momentum, imo.
* http://www.acfa.gov.ab.ca/nav/rates.html |
If the Province made MSI at current levels permanent and indexed it to inflation or simply transferred the education property tax (I think it's about $650m/year), we could likely borrow and build (and cover all our capital needs). Something along these lines needs to happen and must be a part of the Charter discussions. We could then leverage federal funds. No amount of tax room or other current City revenue streams could come even close the order of magnitude of funding we need.