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Health & Fitness

What the Novato City Council and Heidi Klum Have in Common

Clever strategy funds high-rise affordable housing above police department

It took me awhile but I finally figured it out. The light bulb went off after I read about the six additional sites the city council has added to the possible affordable housing sites already selected by an appointed ad hoc group, the topic of so much angst in Novato these days. It crystallized specifically when I read about adding affordable housing on the imaginary upper floor/floors of the .

Let me backtrack for a moment. Heidi Klum is the beautiful model turned reality TV show host of Project Runway, where want to be fashion designers duke it out to become famous fashion designers. The show became such a hit that AOL (once known as America Online), the owner of the hyperlocal Patch website network Patch — 800+ affiliates including this one — decided to make Klum a partnership offer for online content, she couldn’t refuse.

According to the AOL press release of 1/26/2011 it will be “ …. a digital content partnership to create exclusive original programming focusing on fashion, beauty, parenting, arts and crafts, relationships and Lifestyle. Klum and … the producers … will create engaging video content, inspiring articles, addictive blogs, instructional photo galleries that will live on AOL.com.” The intention of course is to make a bundle of money for everyone involved.

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As you know, our current city council is all female, and as you also know, we women can be pretty darn shrewd when push comes to shove. Since Novato is really hurting for money, I think our ladies thought deep and hard in this instance. If they keep doing quirky things like suggesting the non-existent high-rise police department as an affordable housing site, they figured, Patch readers are going to continue to shout and holler like there’s no tomorrow and tell more of their friends who will go on to Novato Patch and read more about this and add their comments. Patch advertisers will get even greater exposure and will get all sorts of new customers, which means they will make more money and therefore add more sales tax revenues to the city coffers. And, that’s just for starters.

The bigwigs at AOL will see all this incredible revenue coming into Novato Patch and they will take notice. They will look at our all female city council and see Heidi Klum-like potential. They will offer these ladies a similar deal for phenomenal money and their addictive blogs and articles and videos will become HUGE.

Find out what's happening in Novatowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Of course, our ladies can’t take any of this money since they will be acting in their official capacities, so all the money will go directly to Novato. There will be such an abundance of money that the city will get that high-rise affordable housing/police headquarters shovel ready lickety split, and it will be big enough and high enough to hold all the units the state says we must have “or else,” so there will be absolutely no more fighting about this issue in Novato anymore. Or, on the other hand, there will be such an abundance of money flowing here that we can tell the state to “shove it” and afford that big, bad lawsuit that apparently is looming out there.

Either way, we win.

How brilliant is that?

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