I have it. I have the answer, the absolutely brilliant answer to all our beach-finance taxation problems, the workable everybody-wins big-picture viable solution, and it is so simple it is astounding. I was driving down the Lakeshore the other day and as I passed one of those solar-standalone robot parking attendents, one of the cracked and vandalized ones, not the ones boarded and wrapped to protect it, it came to me in an inspired flash of clarity of mind and soundness of vision, cemented later that day with the chance encounter with a different sort of ticket: We sell parking as 50-50 tickets!

Think about that. It is so simple, serves our purposes perfectly, and these poor machines are no longer hated and needing protection, they are praised and prized. Here's the plan:

1. We either incorporate the Friends of Sauble Beach as a full non-profit or partner the project with the Lions or some other legal framework. This gets us into the game with the Commission.
2. We modify our solar machines to print serial numbers on the tickets.
3. Every evening at sundown, we top off the sunset show with the draw...
4. These tickets are anonymous, so, if you're not actually there when your number is called, we pull another number.
5. Winning number ... gets half that day's take!

Folks will be buying parking tickets even when they don't have a car! Some will buy two. These are big stakes, we'd sell a whack of parking -- Imagine: go to the beach for the day, and yeah, you have to hang around a little later and spend a bit of money on dinner and all to do that, but dig, you could walk away that day with enough money to pay off your car loan! Wasaga would freak!

There has to be a way. And we can take this farther too, make it a village-inclusive thing that isn't just about sustaining the beach but also boosting local prospects: Like the way Country-Time leveraged the try-again cups from Timmies ... losing tickets from the previous day can be redeemed for discounts at participating beach businesses! Ok, of course that means we have to change the tapes every day to change the colour of the tickets, but I'm tellin' ya, we will be making so much off this program, we can make the roll-changing pageant into a summer youth employment project! Everybody wins!