Something doesn’t seem right in the 2nd Ward.

Let me explain.

Back in late October, the city installed 1250 meters in what can only be called a parking dead zone, near the Illinois Medical District.

Allegedly, it had something to do with keeping people from abandoning vehicles or parking for extended periods of time in that area. But, in reality, there’s a school and a church, a few apartment buildings, but no retail businesses around there. In other words, there’s no reason to go there and park your car.

But now, even more meters are being installed in that general area. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

LAZ Parking employees were on the street inserting timing devices into the meter heads when I was there and hoped the meter installation would there by yesterday or today.

The story was brought to my attention by Carol Marin who is doing a story on this and other meter related issues for NBC 5 at 10:00 PM. Parking meters as far as the eye could see, and no cars there to park there. I tried to count them but I lost track after a while.

The city nor representatives from 2nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti’s office knew how many meters were being installed.

“You should have seen it before,” says Andy Pierce, a spokesman for Ald. Fioretti’s office. “When the meters went up, the cars stopped parking.”

But when I asked Pierce, why an expensive traffic congestion tool like parking meters, were being installed in large quantities to control a situation that could have been handled less expensively with signs and/or increased police patrols, he said, “Let me say it again, before meters, the area was jammed with cars. Meters changed the commuters behavior.”

The area in question is essentially between Ashland and Wood, and 13th and 15th streets. Generally blocks and blocks of parking meters for a wasteland of vacant lots.

Based on a cost of approximately $500 to install each meter, you’re looking at around a $1 million in hardware and no one to park there and feed the meters.

What kind of return on investment is that?

If the city is footing the bill for this when we already have a multi-million dollar budget hole this is an absolutely irresponsible expense.

If LAZ Parking is footing the bill, aren’t they going to be furious that they have to pay to install hundreds of meters that will NEVER generate income?

Well, maybe in 75 years.

As teams of LAZ Parking’s employees have slowly, but quite surely, canvas the city, changing the parking meters to their new, much higher rates, another movement seems to be blossoming as a reaction to these changes.

At first, it seemed just random or coincidence when a broken meter was spotted. There’s no big surprise in finding a broken meter in Chicago–they’re everywhere.

But the number of broken meters seemed to be increasing and e-mails and comments began pouring into this website with tips, along with bits and pieces of information. Websites with very strident points of view have popped up over the past few weeks advocating everything from as simple as a boycott, to using pennies or nickels to fill up the meters to capacity and render them inoperable–at least temporarily.

Spray Paint

An entire block of parking meters, numbering nearly 20, were spotted along west Irving Park in the Albany Park neighborhood, that had both the front and back of their heads spray painted black. Once spray painted, these meters are unreadable by Parking  Enforcement Aides and therefore, vehicles can’t be ticketed as it’s impossible to see if the meters were fed or not.

Decals Removed

LAZ Parking’s new decals have been removed in a concerted effort along Lincoln Ave. and other streets in the Lakeview neighborhood, leaving long stretches of meters without any instructions on how and when to feed the meters. This leaves the meter without the proper information required by law to be an operational parking meter. A motorist could easily contest any expired meter ticket on these meters because it doesn’t exhibit the proper information.

One tipster named Brian says, “In some cases, these decals just peel right off the front of the meter with little or no effort. When these stickers were originally applied, the weather was very cold and it seems the adhesive didn’t adhere correctly. These stickers just come right off. They also appear to be too big to fit into the recessed area they are being placed in. Yet another case of someone in charge not knowing what they are doing.”

Super Glue

In Boystown, along Halsted and Broadway, north and south of Addison, a multitude of meters have their coin slots jammed with quarters or other coins and what seems to be Super Glue or some other high strength adhesive. By our count, 40-50 meters had been vandalized in this way just in that area, with reports of this occurring at spots along Clybourn, Irving Park, Lincoln Ave. and elsewhere.

One individual calling his or her self “Illinois Patriot,” is calling for direct vandalism attacks to disable parking meters.

“WE, the people, need to start fighting back! Here are some ideas to fight back:,” states Illinois Patriot in a communique to The Expired Meter. “A good shot of expanding foam should feed the meter’s coin slot nicely. Don’t get caught… Epoxy putties and VHB sided foam tapes show additional promise for field expedient mayhem and merriment.”

Meters Removed or Damaged

One parking meter in Lakeview, again along Lincoln Ave., was actually removed from the sidewalk by someone, after it was loosened during a traffic accident.

“It was there on Saturday afternoon, but missing Monday morning,” said a local business owner whom asked to remain anonymous.

Another meter we found in Boystown had the entire coin box removed.

Overfeeding Meters With Pennies

One local blogger has championed feeding meters with pennies and nickels instead of quarters. While the other change does not register, once the meter’s coin reservoirs are filled, the meter will read FAIL and is inoperable, cannot be fed and is essentially a free parking spot.

“I’ve done it a couple of times,” says John, the Angry Chicagoan about his Penny Revolution. “I keep thinking one of these days I need to buy a few roll of pennies just to screw with them. A penny, nickel and dime are all legal tender. Consider it a gift to LAZ Parking. No jury in the world will convict you for giving someone money.”

And, in fact, there seems to be no municipal law restricting the use of feeding a parking meter other denominations of coins besides quarters.

“We are finding a lot of pennies and nickels in coin slots,” confirmed one LAZ Parking employee we confronted on the street. He wouldn’t give us his name, his job it is to repair parking meters. “We see a lot of that going on.”

LAZ Parking employees are working hard at keeping up with fixing the inoperable meters.

“We see quite a few of them (broken meters),” said Reggie Johnson, worker employed through a temporary labor company for LAZ Parking, who’s helping with the meter rate changes. “We log them (the broken meters) in and later on a repair crew comes out. Last week a crew I was working with fixed 200 meters in a (eight-hour) shift.”

Some individuals are taking softer, more community organization approach to exhibiting their anger.

One campaign at group action portal, The Point, lists it’s primary objective as “To force Chicago Parking Meter LLC to freeze the parking meter rates until Jan 1, 2011.”  It’s an objective they plan to meet by asking drivers to boycott city meters.

At ChicagoParkingMeters.com, a single-page website promises beginning in April, “This site will be a web 2.0 portal for community organization focused on supporting our rights as residents of the city of Chicago.”

Still others are just making the decision not to park in normally congested areas like Lincoln Park, Wicker Park and Lakeview. Once, where busy streets were impossible to park on, now parking is plentiful. It seems people are deciding not to park in metered areas.

It’s just a simple economic reaction to the higher rates.

One reader named Mike explains saying, “The new Sunday meter regulations are set to ruin the city. The streets in front of our west loop condo used to be packed with cars Saturday nights and Sundays; no more. The spontaneity of going out to eat, shopping and visiting friends is already affected. Thank you Mayor Daley.”

Others plan to exit the city permenantly.

“After more than 20 years here I’m done, just done,” says Chicago Tom. “Our condo is for sale and when it does, we’re outta here. In one last act of defiance, my wife is going to drive our car and intentionally get a red light ticket with photo/video – we’ll have the plates disguised. When the video/photo is viewed, they’ll see my bare ass pressed against the back window accompanied a couple middle fingers. We’ll then drive out of town for the last time.”