Over the past few decades, the City of Windsor has been loathe to take on debt, but the Mayor makes no apologies for taking out a loan to secure the land for the region's new electric vehicle battery plant.
City Councillors approved taking on $53-million in debt to buy the land south of the E.C. Row Expressway and west of Banwell Road. That includes $45-million for the property land and $8-million to service it.
"It's the right application for taking on debt," said Dilkens. "As opposed to raiding the reserves or decimating your capital budget, neither of those were really palatable."
However, Dilkens said the decision doesn't mean council is abandoning its focus on debt reduction and building reserves.
"For all of the residents who are saying my road needs to get done, or this road is in bad condition, if we had taken that money out of the capital budget, that means all of those projects would have been delayed," he added.
Not purchasing the land wasn't on the table.
Dilkens called the project a "once in a generation" opportunity.
The $5-billion facility comes with 2,500 jobs, and then there's the thousands of spin-off jobs.
Meanwhile, work to clear the land is already underway. Dilkens expects to see bulldozers there this summer.
"They've already cut down trees," he said. "They have a very, very aggressive timeline to get this operation up and running, so if there aren't bulldozers on that land by the end of June or early July, I'd be shocked."