Talk about an embarrassment of riches. So much lucky loot from gas and oil is flowing into the provincial public purse even the Tories can't ignore citizens. The arithmetic of affluence is too obvious. Billions of dollars with no place to go.

So this coming Thursday, in this city, the MLAs of the governing party most Calgarians support no matter how pathetic their performance, will meet, and on the agenda is what they plan to do about the building backlog they created and the proposed schools they've refused to construct or modernize.

These same provincial Tory politicians also gather the following week for their annual Stampede hoedown, the so-called raucous caucus, an event coinciding with Ralph's last flapjack flipping as premier. Additional chinwagging over the sorry schools situation will be heard then behind the closed doors.

You see, because of high gas and oil prices, the province now has close to $3 billion more than required by law sitting in the rainy, rainy-day Sustainability Fund, a pot o' plenty not be to confused with the rainy-day Heritage Fund.

With $2.7 billion, that's billions not millions, just chilling on Alberta's bulging balance sheet it is a tough sell not to put a fraction -- about 7% -- toward new public schools in Calgary. Or spare a point or two to help out with much-needed maintenance in existing schools.

This coin does not, I repeat, does not, include the millions upon tens of millions upon hundreds of millions of even more unbudgeted extra bucks to be rolled out at the end of August.

Gene Zwozdesky, the education minister who has taken some hits of late, says a rough draft of his plan for new schools, modernizations, portables and steel-framed modulars is complete, with a final draft to be submitted later this summer.

Zwoz says he is looking to score more than a few cents from the Sustainability Fund and even more from the unbudgeted surplus. The minister says he now feels optimistic of some movement of money as early as the fall.

Last fall, an additional $207 million found its way to school capital projects. Zwoz says that was merely Phase 1. His three-year and five-year plan for new schools is Phase 2.

"There has to be more money. Anything in the surplus is eligible for distribution to any ministry. I'm doing my best to fix things," says Zwoz.

Well, roads and transit finally landed some dough after the hardball efforts of Mayor Bronco, who single-handedly won the day only to be attacked as a "tax-and-spend liberal."

As well, hospital expansions and construction have mercifully begun after agitation by the few activists not drinking the Conservative Kool-Aid.

Zwoz says one budgetary woe is the dramatic increase in costs. The price tag for projects covered by the $207 million announced last fall is already 20% higher.

Lynn Ferguson, a public board trustee for Taradale, Panorama Hills, Coventry Hills and Saddle Ridge, says "parents are extremely frustrated with all the non-announcements and disappointed our government doesn't see it as a priority."

Lynn says these perturbed parents are coming out to meetings and circulating petitions. In sleepy Calgary politics this is the equivalent of storming the Bastille. There is trouble.

And just in time, this page predicts some cash will be released and the peeved voters will forever forget the struggle needed to secure those dollars.

A new provincial Conservative leader will present another persona to the public and, with the political cosmetic surgery complete, the party ensconced in power for 35 years will hang onto their fiefdom a while longer.

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