Workers Remove Parking Meters From Irving Park
How much is this going to cost the city?
The city has been doing construction along Irving Park Road between Ashland Ave. and California Ave. for the past few months.
There are, of course, metered parking along some of those blocks. In order for the construction to be completed, in some cases parking meter payboxes have to be temporarily removed.
One of our semi-regular contributors, Kevin T., snapped some photos of workers, contracted by Chicago Parking Meters, LLC, uprooting the heavy boxes and loading them up onto a truck.
Kevin reports the workers wouldn’t respond to any of his penetrating questions like, “Are you removing these payboxes because of the construction?”, or “I guess you’ll have to put them back after the construction is finished, right?” or a real tough one, “Is that heavy?”
However, perhaps the most important question would be, “How much is this going to cost the taxpayer?”
That’s because anytime metered parking is temporarily removed for road construction, utility work, garbage dumpsters or street festivals, CPM has the right to bill the city for lost revenue.
Our guess?
It’s going to cost a lot.
HAT TIP: Thanks to Kevin T. for the photos and info.
For something like this…usually the city recoups the loss by the permit fee’s they charge to shut the area down.
If the road work is considered “necessary” then I would presume the cost to cover the pending true up bill will come from Streets and San or CDOT budgets.
It doesn’t matter if the money comes from the CDOT or Streets and San budgets, it’s sill taxpayer money. It’s unconscionable that the city would have to pay the Meter company to repair it’s own streets.
The answer to this problem is simple, cancel the lease and pay LAZ/Morgan Stanley/UAE back from the proceeds of the higher meter rates. The cost savings alone from not having to pay LAZ for street closings and handicap parking makes it winner. Of course our Dear Mayor would actually have to WANT to do that. IMO though the precedent of cancelling the deal would not go over well with Rahm’s shiny new infrastructure trust. And that’s really the main impediment to canceling the deal.
Sometimes you gotta do what’s right for the night. Sometimes you gotta live mas.
Today Rahm ordered an Independent Legal Review of the Meter Lease…with orders to Find any and all legal exceptions that will allow the City to tell CPM to F#@k Off and not have to repay a Red Cent.
Rumor is that Daley called Rahm to complain and Rahm refused to take the phone call.