We need to find alternatives to fund university
The intent of this letter is not to rattle nerves but to be constructive. The suspense of waiting to see if the federal government will donate $10 million for the University of Waterloo campus grows tedious. With Mayor Dan Mathieson having compared it’s importance to that of the Shakespeare Festival’s, the university now seems at the point the Festival was before Alec Guiness agreed to come. Suppose our scrappy finance minister Jim Flaherty concludes $10 million is too exorbitant a sum. Then the project is not necessarily dead but it’s time to have a Plan B.

If I were the mayor, I’d compile a list of the really wealthy people in Stratford and area. They could be officially approached and invited to become an elite group of super donors of $200,000 each. Of course, they’d each have their name on an individual plaque in the university for eternal gratitude. A way to enlarge this list would be to include some local real estate agents. They’d all rather live in a university town than in meth-bozo land.

Again I have to mention the idea of municipal photo radar because it’s such a cash cow. This would improve neighbourhood safety and raise funds toward the university. Between wooing local multi-millionaires, implementing photo radar and a smaller federal grant of say $3 million, the total raised would be close to $10 million. If it became necessary the mayor could even sell his SUV to clinch it. After all, that’s what the Festival was built on – a lot of personal sacrifice.

Murray Scott
Stratford