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Posted: Wednesday, 04 November 2009 7:38AM
Parking meter rates to go up
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CHICAGO (CBS) ― New Year's Day is less than two months away. What are your plans? Champagne? Noisemakers? How about quarters? In Chicago, you're going to need more.
As CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, every new year from now on, meter rates will rise as part of the controversial Chicago parking meter lease deal.
The parking meters will go up again on Jan. 1, 2010, from an additional 25 cents an hour more in the outlying neighborhoods to 75 cents an hour more downtown.
Right now, $2 an hour is the highest rate in the city outside the Loop, and that's before the January 1st increase.
For some, the parking meter lease deal looks even worse now, than it did when rushed through City Council a year ago. Because the money Chicago got for the parking meter and Chicago Skyway lease deals is going, going, soon to be gone; even though we've given up the parking spots and toll road for nearly a hundred years.
"I think it's gonna come back to haunt us," said Chicagoan Peter Nielsen as he fed a meter in Old Town.
From the people paying the increased meter fees, to the alderman who tried to block the deal, the reality is setting in.
"It's a bad thing to spend all this money in the way that we are," said Alderman Scott Waguespack. "Literally within the first three years of having all these dollars from the Skyway and from the parking meters, and then having absolutely nothing on the table for the next 70 years."
So we're left with no meters and no money. And taxpayers holding the bag at both ends.
The countdown clock is ticking on theexpiredmeter.com website that's all parking all the time. And whose editor says New Year's in Chicago now has new significance.
"I think it's an annual reminder of how bad the deal is," says the editor who calls himself "'Mike The Parking Ticket Geek."
CBS 2 wanted to talk to LAZ Parking, but they said they were not doing interviews Tuesday.
LAZ spokesman Avis Lavelle, Mayor Daley's former press secretary, said if we wanted information, we should go to City Council; displaying the same kind of arrogance the mayor was constantly apologizing for when this whole thing started.
"When you're contracting it out or giving it to a private entity, it's harder to hold them accountable," said former City Inspector General David Hoffman, who investigated the process which led to the lease deal.
Hoffman has since left his position as the city's independent watchdog to run for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.
"We put out a scenario where there was an alternative that would have been a shorter lease with revenue sharing," Hoffman said.
While the private company now stands to quadruple Chicago's meter revenues, people are starting to question more than just this deal.
"I just think there's a lot of mismanagement going on in the city," said Chicagoan Carolyn Szaflik. "And I don't understand why everything's going up and we're still in a deficit."
Mayor Daley has argued that money from the meter and Skyway deals are the only way he's been able to avoid big tax hikes.
But the arguments seem to be falling on deaf ears of taxpayers furious at the way the meters were handed over, and are now being reminded of it every new year.
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