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Golden Egg

North Bay Hydro - the Goose?

Aesop is the name many of us recall when thinking about the goose that laid the golden egg. As the fable goes, the  owner(s) of the goose (chicken, swan in some versions) got an golden egg every day, but being a little greedy, they decided to kill the goose, eviscerate the fowl and take all of the golden eggs from the inside of the bird. Alas, there were no golden eggs inside the bird and because they had killed the fowl, no more golden eggs. There are different versions of the story including one with golden feathers but you can be certain that the Mayor has heard them all since proposing his financing scheme a couple of weeks ago..

The morals drawn from the story usually have something to do with greed but in the present case of the Mayor killing the Hydro goose, I think this is more a case of short-sightedness not greed. While the North Bay Hydro loan may be ‘callable’, it also has no term and so can continue in perpetuity. The million dollar golden egg will arrive each year as long as Hydro has the ability to pay. With the electricity rate structure guaranteed, that goose is never going to die. That the city promised to donate a million dollars a year for twenty years to build the white elephant on the western verge of the city is another story. However, once that debt is paid, we can use our golden egg to repair our infrastructure or whatever the council of day deems the best use for the money.

If we call in the loan, or any portion of it, we diminish our future prospects. It is like cashing in your RRSPS and then wondering what happened to that rosy retirement you planned. And trust me, eviscerating Hydro will yield no gold. That the city thinks Hydro can borrow more cheaply than the City can does speak volumes about how well our City is meeting its current financial obligations – and the prospects for the future. Paying off your Visa card with the MasterCard just does not work.

Perhaps it is time we dropped our aspirations of living high on the hog (must have been another one of Aesop’s fables) in a city where the average wage is low. Sure the folk who drive the Caddies and Mercedes aren’t feeling the pinch of the ever-rising property taxes, food and shelter, and now water costs in our city. They will continue to water their green lawns and flush after peeing, but those who have to watch their nickels and dimes (I wanted to say pennies) need some relief.

The Mayor and council need to keep that golden egg-laying goose and reduce costs at City Hall. Even if it means a reduction in the sacred level of service. Forget that pittance of savings expected from the CAO’s office – let’s go all in and look for a million-dollar golden egg savings. After all, if council’s North Bay Hydro company could find a million, why can’t their much larger organization do it?





Bill Walton

About the Author: Bill Walton

Retired from City of North Bay in 2000. Writer, poet, columnist
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