The Politics Of Parking Meters
Candidates Make Meter Lease Deal Cause Celebre
Who would have ever thought the lowly parking meter would become the star of Chicago’s 2011 mayoral election?
But here we are, three years after Mayor Daley shoved his parking meter lease deal through the city council in 72 hours and three years of consecutive meter rate increases.
And Chicagoans are still angry, no…pissed about it.
Property taxes, public education, police staffing, budget deficits anyone?
Nah! Parking meters.
Every single major mayoral candidate still in the race has slammed the parking meter lease deal and some are trying to ride the issue straight into the Mayor’s office.
Carol Moseley-Braun came out swinging against the deal early in the campaign and vowed to find a way to repeal the deal and pay back Morgan Stanley (Chicago Parking Meters, LLC) the $1.16 billion it paid for the 75 year deal.
Gery Chico, also took a shot at the deal, but he was more upset with the fact the city spent all but $75 million of the meter proceeds in just two years and promised to make sure that $75 million was safely put aside, generating interest income for the city for years to come.
Even front runner Rahm Emmanuel, who has been literally miming his way through the election, broke his Harpo like silence to criticize the meter lease deal a few weeks ago.
But then, on the eve of the parking meter rate increases, City Clerk Miguel Del Valle jumped into the fray at a press conference with IVI-IPO, calling the lease deal “crazy”, voiced support for the IVI-IPO’s lawsuit against the deal and promised his own lawsuit to upend the deal if he were elected mayor.
Not to be outdone, today, the day after the higher rates began taking effect, Moseley-Braun held a press conference, doubling down on her original anti-meter lease position and says she will file a lawsuit against Morgan Stanley and cancel the contract if elected Mayor, claiming Chicago got “snookered” and “took.”
Later in the day, Chico, not wanting to lose his meter lease deal bona fides, excoriated Moseley-Braun for, according to the Chicago Sun-Times being “wild-eyed … reckless … irresponsible” for promising she could undo the deal. Like Moseley-Braun, Chico is also an attorney and says he doesn’t see a way to get out of the parking meter contract according to the Sun-Times.
In the meantime, the once lowly parking meter remains silent on the issue of its new found fame, content to suck down more of Chicagoans’ quarters each and every day for another 73 years.
I think Chico’s right. Even if a court did overturn the deal, they wouldn’t let the city keep the money. So, the only way out is to pay back the money.
Would love to hear where M-B thinks she’s going to find that money.
This is just another example of why I don’t like Carol – she is just saying what the voters want to hear. I think the “consensus” made a huge mistake with her – I don’t think she has a chance. Her past record is just a lot of failure.
How does she think she is going to “cancel” the deal? It’s not the Mayor’s power to do that. I wonder if she really thinks she would have the power to do that. And if she does, that’s even worse than blatantly lying to get votes.
Carol has a great plan to undo the meter lease: “Sue them all.”
Yeah, I’m sure that would be easy and not cost a fortune in lawyers fees.
I hate the lease deal as much as the next person, but realistically there is no way to undo it.
So…how much money is stashed in the TiF Funds? I’ve heard between 500 and 1.5 Billion from sources…but not sure personally.
Fire 25 Aldermen/women and Staffs. That’s a 75m per year savings right there alone.
Stop providing Police Protective Services to people that don’t need it, let them pay for private security like every non-Clouted person has to.
Well, Daley has his Legacy! Every time someone feeds one of those 2001 Space Odyssey monolith-looking things, they will think of Daley. What gets me is if someone uses a credit card to feed it, you pay the meter plus you pay a transaction “tax” to Morgan Stanley if you don’t bank with them. It’s like using a TCF card at a Citi ATM where you pay a $3.00 “tax”. If you use these infernal pay boxes, NEVER use anything but quarters! What a racket.
So if Chico is Chico and Emmanuel is Harpo then that must make Moseley-Braun Groucho. We’ll just forget about Gummo and Zeppo since they left the act early.
The solution is simple. Let the deal stay in place. Simply make it illegal for private entities to issue tickets/citations and make it illegal for government entities to issue tickets intended to force someone to pay fees to private entities that are leasing the rights to use public land. The Parking Meter folk can still collect their money. They simply have to do it the way that EVERY OTHER BUSINESS collects their money.
That approach doesn’t violate the lease deal. And within 6 months or less the company with the leases would approach the city about canceling the deal on terms favorable to the City or they would stop repairing the meters and the like and the City would then be able to cancel the lease for their violation of the lease.
David, I’m voting for you for Mayor.
Anonymous says:
Space Odyssey monolith-looking things, they will think of Daley. What gets me is if someone uses a credit card to feed it, you pay the meter plus you pay a transaction “tax” to Morgan Stanley if you don’t bank with them.
My Comment:
You do? I don’t see that posted anywhere on the box. And I would guess that this would be improper if you use a mastercard or visa under the service agreement that must be signed to accept the cards. Sounds like another topic for a Citizen Initiative.
It would be good to find out for sure. But given bank fees for anything, don’t be surprised if I end up right.
There are no extra fee connected to plastic transactions at these payboxes. By law, they have to give you an onscreen prompt stating so and give you the opportunity to cancel the swipe.
I hate the lease as much as the next guy but please don’t go around fanning the flames with faulty info.
One minor point, David. When you use your CC, the “tax” you are referring to is the credit card transaction fee. That goes to partly to the card network provider (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) and partly to your card’s issuing bank (PNC, Chase, BOA, etc.). So in effect it’s taking some money away from the payee (in this case, Morgan Stanley), from what they would have received if it were a cash transaction. This is why many businesses do not accept credit cards – they don’t like having N% of the purchase total siphoned away.
So, your decision on whether or not to use credit depends on who you want to stick it to. If you want to stick it to Morgan Stanley/LAZ, pay with credit, since they will get ~95% of what they would have received had you paid in cash. If you want to stick it to Visa, Mastercard, BOA, etc., pay in cash.
Oops, that comment was meant for “Anonymous”, not David since he was just quoting.
I tend to use a credit card for the very reason that I want Morgan Stanley to get hit with the surcharge. I particularly like to do this when I am parking in the neighborhoods and using the meter for one or two small increments of time. It sounds like I should use American Express as their fee to Laz is higher…. My only question is which actually costs them more, processing the quarters or processing the charge card. My theory is that up to about $3.00 or so its the credit card, over $3.00 the quarters may cost them more to process. But since I tend not to park in the loop, I haven’t yet been at one of the bandit meters.
David,
You are quite right. My analysis conveniently (and incorrectly) ignored the cost of processing cash (hiring people to go around and collect the coins/bills, take it all to the bank, etc.). It’s difficult to say which method overall costs them more to process without having access to a lot of information that we most likely aren’t privy to. Your guess of $3.00 being the threshold seems as reasonable as any.
Personally, I relish in making those $0.25 credit card charges, knowing I get 2.5 cents back. FWIW, I recently moved to Baltimore, and we have very similar meters here (also operated by LAZ). Besides the rates being overall lower, a big difference is, the minimum amount you can charge is $1 (below that, you must use coins). That also backs up your theory of small swipes being more costly than equivalent coins.
Braun’s unthought through comments will tell more about her than anything else. Don’t tell me she has a law degree, how many times she took the Bar or if “common-cents” runs in her gene pool.
If you can avoid it, you don’t want to ever pay a bank fee or transaction “tax” fee. Why? Because you only make the financial equivalent of a black hole more massive. Banks are to money what black holes are to matter. Feed either one, it only gets more massive by the amount fed… but it gets hungrier! Feed either one at your own risk.
There is your fun astrophysics lesson for the day.