Levi beats fund-raising drum

After the giggling stopped and a few seconds passed to ponder, it didn't sound crazy at all.

"Maybe we could auction off," said Levi Leipheimer Tuesday night, "some very expensive rides."

So who would like to take a bike ride with the great Leipheimer? Pro-rate the experience: $20 a mile until your chubby butt can't take it anymore. Take pictures afterward and adjourn to a tony bar for drinks, all the money going to the 2009 Tour of California. Shoot, make it a caravan. Stick Levi in the pack with a hundred riders, all at the going rate of 20 bucks per. Better still, find a deep wallet who wants Levi all to himself and is willing to pay -- I'm just throwing a number out there -- $10,000 for the unique experience.

Schedule it for a day in which Levi isn't planning a killer mountain climb. Don't want any of that cycling goodwill in an ambulance headed for a hospital.

Hey, this is California! We're supposed to be the cutting edge. And when you are trying to keep Santa Rosa as a host city for the bike race, no idea is too big or too small, too silly or too absurd. Not with the economic obstacles facing Santa Rosa as it tries to slash $50,000 for the budget for both this year and next.

Tuesday night at a Railroad Square pub, city officials gave Leipheimer a proclamation, a big-time pat on the back and as much time as he needed to sit in front of the microphone and extol to approximately 250 people the need to keep Santa Rosa in the Tour of California mix.

"The Tour of California is a moving postcard for the state," Leipheimer said. "The tour means a lot to this community. We need to ensure the race comes back here." Leipheimer's pleadings, and the fundraiser itself, coming so soon after the completion of the 2008 Tour of California, should raise a red flag. This is no empty, valueless cry for help. There is real concern.

It's only nine days since Leipheimer won his second consecutive Tour of California and yet the city felt it had to start beating the fund-raising drum now. It has good reason. The 2008 Tour of California, expected to cost the city $120,000, now will require $150,000 due to additional costs such as increased hotel room rates for the riders.

The city raised $115,000. How will they make up the $35,000? How will they reach $150,000 next year when the city will contribute only $20,000, $25,000 less than it did this year? Where's the money? Where's the sugar daddy of sugar daddy? And how absurd is it to talk like this when anybody who was anybody in the 2008 tour spoke of Santa Rosa in glowing terms?

"There would be a hole in the tour," said Scott Nydam, a Sebastopol resident who rides for Santa Rosa-based BMC and won King of the Mountain honors at the 2008 tour. "If you lose Santa Rosa, you lose the heart of Northern California cycling. It was by far the only deafening time (from the crowds) we had coming into a city during the tour. I even joked with Levi about how many stages can we run through Santa Rosa."

Santa Rosa is hustling because it must submit a bid to be a finishing site on the 2009 tour to race owner AEG by the end of April. City officials will have to know, in less than eight weeks, if it will have the guaranteed finances. And what a roll of the dice that is, considering forecasts claim the current economic downturn is not likely to stop in the foreseeable future.

Many ideas are being floated. Three rows of seats at the finish line with expensive price tags. Laura Charameda, director of Santa Rosa-based Team Swift, suggested asking everyone downtown for the Stage One finish to donate five bucks. Increased hotel taxes -- like the ones in the Phoenix area that helped fund the new NFL stadium there -- are being considered. There is even some talk, in order to save money, that Santa Rosa may have to abandon being the start for Stage Two.

Ideas can't come fast enough or implemented quick enough. The city is strapped for funds. Its citizens, the ones who haven't lost their homes, are strapped for money. The time has never been more wrong financially and yet never more right for cycling. It's an unholy confluence, where something with so much upside squares off against something that has so much drag to it.

Maybe Bill Gates would like to take a ride with Levi. It's the best idea I've got.

You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.