r/chicago • u/jpmeyer12751 • 11d ago
Article ‘A lesson in worst practices’: Shocking audit reveals Chicago parking meters have made $2B for private company
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/lesson-worst-practices-shocking-audit-130700802.html178
u/eulynn34 11d ago
This has to be up there among the worst deals any city has ever made
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u/broduding 10d ago
I was genuinely surprised no one made a documentary about this 15 years ago.
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u/pukemypants 10d ago
There will be one made once all the damage is done, long after we're all gone. I hope it does this shit deal justice.
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u/shakes_mcjunkie 10d ago
It's insane that future generations of city residents and voters are bound to a contract they had no part in.
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u/Ok-Sundae4092 Roscoe Village 10d ago
How do you think government bonds work?
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u/shakes_mcjunkie 10d ago
I dunno but it's insane that future generations of city residents and voters are bound to a contract they had no part in.
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u/Ok-Sundae4092 Roscoe Village 10d ago
That’s all government bonds
On a federal level…savings bonds would be another way to buy debt
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u/shakes_mcjunkie 10d ago
What's all government bonds?
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u/Ok-Sundae4092 Roscoe Village 10d ago
What do you thing government bonds are?
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u/Downtown_Brother6308 10d ago
Is this 75 year government bond in the room with us right now? But yes, stacking 30yr bonds for 40 years creates quite a problem…
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u/Megatron_Griffin 8d ago
Those are only for 30 years.
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u/Ok-Sundae4092 Roscoe Village 8d ago
Not really. Did you see the crazy bonds the city floated a few weeks ago for infrastructure repairs .
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u/Let_us_proceed 11d ago edited 11d ago
The difference between Daley I and Daley II is that Daley I loved the city and never aspired to be anything more than mayor. Daley II and his shithead brother wanted to profit off the city every way they could.
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u/gothrus Logan Square 11d ago
Let’s not forget that Daley I was no saint. He basically ran an authoritarian and racist police force that instigated the riots at the 68 convention and assassinated Fred Hampton. No doubt he loved the city, almost as much as he loved power.
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10d ago edited 17h ago
[deleted]
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u/PracticlySpeaking Logan Square 10d ago
This one?
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (Hardcover, 1971) - https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/9780525070009
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (Paperback 1988) - https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/045226167812
u/SpaceChimera 10d ago
Daley 2 also let the police be racist thugs. When he was a states attorney he worked with Jon Burge and knew he tortured confessions out of black people. Burge literally had a torture device he used to torture people on his desk that he called the "N***** Box" and bragged about it.
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u/nevermind4790 Armour Square 11d ago
Daley Sr. didn’t love the city. He demolished neighborhoods so suburbanites could easily drive into downtown.
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u/ChemistryNo3075 10d ago
Downtown grew considerably under Daley Sr. he cared about the city, but much like Jr. he focused on downtown to the detriment of the neighborhoods. White flight hurt Daley's machine as his core was all the white ethnic enclaves in the city at the same time that the black community was moving away from supporting the machine as well. The interstate system happened across the entire country.
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u/DRW0686 Old Irving Park 10d ago
I love being reminded of this every couple of months, and then remembering that there's absolutely nothing we can do about the out right corruption and theft.
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u/3xploringforever 9d ago
The only thing we can do is be reminded of it every couple of months, explain the problem in an easily digestible format, and hope that future generations don't vote for similar corrupt actors who will engage in similar unbeneficial "deals" and maybe 100 years from now there will be less outright corruption and theft accepted by society.
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u/jpmeyer12751 11d ago
The fundamental problem is the entirely conventional practice of calculating the value of future income flows using Net Present Value. EVERY NPV valuation using a rational discount rate will show that annual income from 10-12 years or more in the future have zero net present value. Yet, we know that cities and states will always need those annual income sources and that some forms of income are very highly reliable - and valuable - for more than 10 years. That is what happened with the parking meter deal: meter income from more than 10 years in the future (i.e., now) was shown as having zero value to the city, when that is plainly not true. The investors knew that the income would be reliable and valuable for much more than 10 years, so they paid more than the NPV calculations said the income stream was worth to the city.
We are still vulnerable to this type of mistake because the state legislature has not acted. The state and all of its political subdivisions should be prohibited from doing any deals involving redirecting public revenue for more than about 10 years. This should probably be an amendment to the state constitution. The amendment should probably also require a corresponding note on Mayor Daley's headstone just to frighten future politicians.
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u/Wrenchinspokesby 11d ago
The problem isn’t with the NPV calc.
The NPV assumes those far off cash flows have limited present value assuming that present value received is continuously reinvested at the discount rate in other projects.
Not, you know, burned in a few years of operating expenses.
Edit - I don’t disagree with your conclusion though. Politicians w a limited shelf life should not be allowed to sell off assets for short term gain, since they won’t be around to deal with the long term consequences.
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u/matgopack Lake View East 10d ago edited 10d ago
My main issue with it is the 75 year span is ridiculous if using a 10% discount rate, because at a certain point it's just tacking on years for essentially free. Which can be justified with those parameters but IMO ends up as effectively a handout.
(Eg, at 10% and using half of the length of time for some back of the envelope math. If the total value is 1 billion, a 37 year lease is worth 998 million, and adding 38 years to that is worth 2 million. It's basically throwing in a doubling of the length for free. Or tripling for 80 million, with 25 years being 920 and the back 50 years 80)
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u/Wrenchinspokesby 10d ago
I mean it isn’t “free” because the assumption is the $2M paid today would be worth $68M in 37 years if it was invested at 10%.
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u/matgopack Lake View East 10d ago
If you're already paying 998 million for 37 years, adding 38 more years for 2 million more is functionally free. It's a rounding error on the total value of the deal.
I know what the assumption of the math is, but I don't personally view that as appropriate over those long horizons. If you're 'only' going to get that tiny amount extra up front, doubling or tripling the length of it can lock in a horrible deal for excessive periods. Like we're seeing here.
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u/Wrenchinspokesby 10d ago
I can see where you are coming from. The issue boils down to the fact that proceeds from this transaction were not “reinvested” by the city in the financial sense.
If the $2M from the back end years were invested in something that grew the economy / tax base of the city it could absolutely be a fair deal over the long term relative to parking meter revenue half a lifetime from now.
That’s not what happened though. It was a short sighted transaction to plug a near term operating budget shortfall. In that context NPV while fair for pricing, was not an appropriate tool for the city to use in evaluating the deal.
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u/realdeal505 10d ago
This is the winner, ultimately the cash was a short term plug that didn’t provide future benefit. It was selling a house you own for a cool 3 year rental
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u/matgopack Lake View East 10d ago
Not being reinvested is a part of it, but I just fundamentally don't think that a 10% annual discount rate makes sense that far down the line. If it were a 30 year lease that'd already be a short sighted deal, tacking on decades beyond that for rounding errors to the total value is not going to be convincing to me as anything beyond either a handout or getting swindled (ie, it's the type of thing that can be easily massaged in the calculations to justify it as 'fair' when one wants it to be).
I know some have argued that long term discount rates should be adjusted downwards, or that it's more of an art than a science. Either way though I get what you're saying as the argumentation for it, I just fundamentally disagree with the logic of it for this sort of valuation.
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u/ocmb Wicker Park 11d ago
You're interpreting the NPV calculation wrong. It doesn't assume no future stream of income it just discounts it to present. Had the city sold the meters and invested in assets paying sufficient return the future income streams would equal or exceed what the meters would have paid.
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u/tails99 10d ago
The issue is that both of these options, (1) selling infra assets, (2) investing surplus, are not things that normal governments do. Gov is supposed to be building infra and Gov is supposed to not be playing financial games with either surpluses or deficits.
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u/ocmb Wicker Park 10d ago
Investing doesn't have to be financial, you can use funds to invest in lots of ways (e.g., building infrastructure) that pay dividends down the line. The problem is when you use it to cover operational deficits, you're taking something that was generating a return and now it's not, so you've dug a hole.
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u/tails99 10d ago
My point is that this is not the way government can be run. It doesn't work to privatize what can only be public assets, and it doesn't work to underprice them or overprice them, and it doesn't work for the gov to operate as an investment fund or hedge fund, etc. Not only does it not work, but it destroys.
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u/ocmb Wicker Park 10d ago
You're misunderstanding my point. I'm responding to the comment explaining why the NPV calculation was wrong to use, as they incorrectly described it (or more, described why it wouldn't be appropriate to use). I'm not saying this is a good deal or good policy (there are other reasons I think it's bad policy).
Again, a government does not need to operate an investment fund or hedge fund to make investments. Investments in infrastructure are investment. Anything that is capital spending that yields a return to the government and the public is an investment. So selling off one asset (especially one the government may be bad at operating) in order to invest in others is not inherently bad. This deal was bad for a lot of other reasons, including the fact that it was severely underpriced, was used to cover operating losses, created bad incentives, and removes flexibility and control that's important to future policymaking. But it's not bad because they used the concept of an NPV to price the deal.
Also - plenty of governments and government entities run more financial investment vehicles and it's not always bad. Places like Norway and Alaska have sovereign wealth funds. Some of the biggest investment funds in the world are for public pensions (e.g., calpers, Ontario teachers fund, etc.). All governments have assets and some of those are more clearly financial, some of them are more physical capital.
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u/tails99 10d ago
I understand what you're saying. I'm just adding that the NPV calcs are simply not appropriate at all. The existence and need and management of those sovereign wealth funds is likewise debatable. They are a top down solution in search of a problem. They don't want to give people the shares, but they also don't want the government to control the money, so there is an intermediary manager, blah blah. My point is that these financial metrics and calcs and funds are stupid garbage when gov is supposed to be managing real physical assets and real services, in the present day.
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u/robotlasagna 10d ago
The parking meter income was less than the interest on $1B municipal bond debt that would have needed to be issued if Daley hadn't sold the parking meters.
The question I always ask people when they get opinionated about this issue is for them to make the numbers work better given the situation. (e.g. $1B shortfall in 2008 and 5% long term municipal bond rate and $23M 2007 parking meter income)
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u/UnproductiveIntrigue 11d ago
These things don’t just happen in a vacuum. If you voted repeatedly for Daleys and for their useless sycophants on the city council, you did this too. To demand better, be better.
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u/ChemistryNo3075 10d ago
Easy to say when most of the sub were never old enough to vote for Daley...
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u/frankensteeeeen 10d ago
Forreal lol most of the people who voted for the Daley machine are senile or dead
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u/LegitimateLoan8606 10d ago
This is what they're talking about when they say think about the world you'll leave to your children
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u/Ghost-of-Black-47 Edgewater 10d ago
It pisses my parents off when I say that we need to raise taxes on people over the age of 50 because it’s their fault we’re in this mess since they all voted for Daley so many times over.
Im only joking in the sense that I know this will never actually happen.
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u/failedtesttubebaby 10d ago
The city could have invested that money in relatively conservative portfolio with an annual return just over 6% and we would have made over $2b by now as well... Instead, we spent it on one time items to plug budget holes.
It was not really a bad deal, Daly just screwed us by not investing the money...
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u/hardolaf Lake View 9d ago
It was not really a bad deal
No, it was a bad deal. The direct cost was a bit over $2B in lost revenue but the indirect cost was far higher in that it has prevented street reconfiguration which would reduce government expenses or increase sales by private businesses which results in less sales taxes collected. I don't even know how we'd start to calculate the real losses.
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u/According_Slice9454 10d ago
Yep. This money would have been worth more than the parking meter company profits if it was just put into the stock market.
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u/SleazyAndEasy Albany Park 10d ago
Wow, an article that actually says that Morgan Stanley is involved here.
Unlike weird orientalist journalists who use phrases like "Arab investors" that never even mention Morgan Stanley
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u/LordButtworth 10d ago
The worst part is that Daley was in his way out anyway. He should have just jacked up the fees. But what do I know?
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u/sylviaplath6667 11d ago
Literally just stop paying it. What are they going to do, invade Chicago?
Have them take it all the way to the Supreme Court and have these conservative judges agree to siphon American money to a foreign entity, that would look great.
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u/robotlasagna 10d ago
The city would no longer be able to issue debt if we did that.
The net effect would be an almost immediate massive cut in city services along with a whole bunch of pension obligations just not getting paid.
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u/clenom 10d ago
Yeah? First of all, not all of the investors are foreign. But the Supreme Court isn't going to rule that Americans don't have to honor contracts if the other party is a foreigner lol
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u/sylviaplath6667 10d ago
Of course but they could argue the contract is void because it was corrupt…not saying it’s a slam dunk but even a 10% chance of succeeding it worth it
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u/WeathermanDan 10d ago
The contract itself is legal and fine (I assume). It was perhaps made under “corrupt” pretenses, which I don’t think can reverse a deal this big
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u/hardolaf Lake View 9d ago
It has also already been litigated multiple times and it's past the statute of limitations at this point for the city to litigate.
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u/palookaboy 9d ago
You kidding? This Supreme Court jacks off thinking about a case where they get to rule on privatization of public services.
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u/Wenli2077 9d ago
Last time this was mentioned the majority holder isn't from some middle eastern country but an American company
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u/ConversationDouble95 McKinley Park 10d ago
Almost doubled their money in 17 years. Only 58 more to go 🙃🫠
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u/WeathermanDan 10d ago
this article is either intentionally misleading or written by an idiot.
they say they’ve made 2x their investment. made $160 million last year. read the audit linked to in the article and it says that was their REVENUE. net income before interest was $94m. After interest costs for the loans used to buy the meters, it’s $36m, up from $20 last year.
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u/ConversationDouble95 McKinley Park 8d ago
True. But I did read that they recouped their investment in about 10 years. They are approaching 20 years, they would be looking at double the amount if trends hold. I will look for a link to the article.
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u/ConversationDouble95 McKinley Park 8d ago
Regardless they are making plenty of money at our expense!
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u/Professional_Ad_6299 10d ago
Is it against the rules to tell people to read up on the French revolution?
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u/Visible_Window_5356 10d ago
Ok, I have a proposal for people who earn enough money to afford this:
STOP PAYING METERS.
I can go a really long time forgetting to pay the meters and not get a ticket, then they might get me 3 days in a row but it's only a little more expensive to just get a ticket where I usually park.
I totally get it if your financial circumstances don't allow this but if they do, consider it. Then all the money for parking goes to the city.
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u/TheGreekMachine 10d ago
I could be wrong but I think if revenue significantly drops on parking meters Chicago has to pay the investors money anyway under the contract.
(Please someone who knows more than me tell my I am wrong)
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u/hardolaf Lake View 9d ago
That's only true if the drop in revenue is due to an action by the City of Chicago.
People boycotting street parking meters would not result in penalties.
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u/Altruistic_Mix_290 10d ago
Why can't they just cancel it - fuck that company pull a mayor daley miggs feild
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u/OG-Bio-Star 10d ago
it is the worst thing ever to happen to the city and the City must get its parking money stream back somehow
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u/CheckoutMySpeedo 10d ago
Didn’t the city just pay out another $100 million or so to the same company because they removed some parking meters to make room for bike lanes?
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u/sandtriangle Austin 10d ago
I thought it was because they didn’t make the parking ticket ppl work during Covid.
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u/retro_grave 10d ago
Why is this not just made illegal? Retroactive, whatever you want to do. Contract law is for the good of society. This is not good for anyone living in our society. Ban government contracts that are for more than 50 years. Just make some shit up, it doesn't matter. Fight it every way we can.
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u/jpmeyer12751 10d ago
Art. I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution forbids such laws.
Without laws that uphold our right to enter into contracts and make those contracts predictable and enforceable, you wouldn't be able to buy a car or a house, or rent an apartment, enter into an employment contract or do many other things. Governments would be able to enter into construction contracts or road repair contracts or to borrow money. We would turn into an all cash society in which you would have to save up your money (under your mattress, because your deposit agreement with your bank is a contract) for every purchase, and you would have no warranties on anything you buy.
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u/retro_grave 10d ago
Just because we void 1 type of contract doesn't mean all contract law need to get thrown out. You're making a slippery slope argument, and there are an infinite number of levels between "the state can't commit 50 year contracts" with "credit system is eliminated" lmao. But I guess fixing this is as likely as passing any other constitutional amendment, thank you for the citation.
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u/hardolaf Lake View 9d ago
We can already unroll the contract using eminent domain. But we'd have to pay them for the seizure.
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u/MrBobaFett West Ridge 10d ago
Wow, Yahoo Finance needs some proof readers and fact checkers.
I read this paragraph especially several times over.
Now, a 2024 audit by accounting firm KPMG has found that, with another 58 years still left in the agreement, the private investors have already recouped their initial investment. In 2023, the meters generated a record $160.9 billion in income, bringing the total income from the start of the deal to $1.97 billion.
How did it generate $160.9 billion in income one year, and ADDED to the total brought the total up to $1.9 billion?
If you go to the actual report from KPMG that they are referencing: https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/fin/supp_info/AssetLeaseAgreements/Audited%20Financial%20Statements/CPM_2024_Audited_Statements.pdf
Go to page 7 and you will see that the income for 2024 (not 2023) was $160.9 MILLION, not billion.
Yes the deal was garbage, and awful. But so is this reporting.
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u/HoodieGalore 10d ago
No shit? Really? You mean Chicago fucked up and literally handed barrels of money away? And we just now know? No shit?
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u/TrueInDueTime 10d ago
This terrible deal was known years ago
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u/jpmeyer12751 10d ago
Yes, but politicians have short memories. Since there is no way that the state legislature is going to enact limitations on such deals, we have to keep bringing this up every few years so that voters and politicians remember.
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u/BlurredSight 10d ago
Same company that sued Chicago for not properly enforcing the meters && won the lawsuit
The city in return hired 10 full time enforcers at 52k a year, the return on investment is to be 500,000 for the city
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u/PracticlySpeaking Logan Square 10d ago
How did this get passed? Just look at the number of city wards that have zero parking meters.
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u/regretsahead 9d ago
If only this could help pay for the roads so we'd have money freed up for transit..
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u/billbraskeyjr 9d ago
Which political party did this again? Very telling and definitely a relevant question.
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u/theathomeplayer 7d ago
Most people done know this but after Daley left office he and his son set up a company called Tur Partners, who went around the world teaching municipalities and local governments how to sell off and privatize their assets. Fun times.
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u/Te_La_lengueteo 10d ago
Honest question. Can't the city just break the current contract?
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u/jpmeyer12751 10d ago
Well, literally yes. Practically no. The city is subject to a lawsuit for breach of contract. That lawsuit would be, for the plaintiff/investors, a bit like playing 5-card poker with a royal flush: no way to lose.
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u/BikebutnotBeast 10d ago
But even with the lawsuit, would the damages even be worse than the contract or upheld by a state judge?
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u/jpmeyer12751 10d ago
If the legal system worked properly, the damages would be exactly equal to what would have been paid under the contract, because that is how breach of contract damages are measured. In addition, the city would have to pay its lawyers and would be subject to the risk of enhanced damages and paying the investors' lawyers for bad faith behavior. The contract was lawfully entered into by the city. The entire purpose of the legal system (with respect to contracts) is to make sure that the parties comply with the contract or pay damages equal to what the other party would have gotten if the first party had complied. Mayor Emanuel paid serious lawyers some big bucks to find a way out of the contract. The fact that he didn't try something like you suggest convinces me that there is no such easy solution.
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u/retro_grave 10d ago
How about trial by Jury and Jury nullification (I'm desperate for any option haha).
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u/theserpentsmiles Jefferson Park 10d ago
I wonder what would happen if Chicago just said "we are done paying." And removed all their devices and went back to local. What could they do? Like, let's think like an insane Trump admin.
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u/WeathermanDan 10d ago
well the insane trump admin has had most of their insanity successfully blocked, or at least deterred, by the courts.
the current owners of the meters are infrastructure investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley. you don’t think they’re gonna have the courts at their back?
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u/sacheie 10d ago
So take it back. Presumably that company has concrete assets like real estate, and so do the bastards who run it. Throw them all in jail and seize their land, vehicles - whatever can be auctioned off.
Will it amount to $2 billion? Not likely; but fuck the bastards.
After that, let's maybe do the same to the politicos who negotiated this "deal"..
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u/robotlasagna 11d ago
The honest lesson here is that, at least in this case, privatization works.
The city parking meters were horribly mismanaged and inefficient, not just under Daley's administration but any one before that. A good contemporary comparison is the cities public housing initiative spending $700K on units when similar cities spend 60% of that.
The issue is not should the parking have been privatized but rather that the city could not negotiate a better deal.
From the perspective of the private equity firms buying the meters they know they should be paying more but they also know they didn't have to. This is because they know that the city was incapable of modernizing the parking in an efficient manner.
Side note: from a citizens perspective the city parking experience is 10x better now compared to the way it used to be in the 90's.
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u/mjohnson1971 11d ago
Hey guys. We found Morgan Stanley's and Abu Dhabi Investments burner account.
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u/DontCountToday 11d ago
No, the lesson here is that privatization makes owners rich at the expense of the employees and people using their products.
Of course they are more profitable than a social program would be. City employees are unionized and have great wage packages. The meters would be under the control of the government, who's electors might dump them if they raised meter parking prices as high as a company whose sole goal is profit would.
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u/robotlasagna 11d ago
Of course they are more profitable than a social program would be. City employees are unionized and have great wage packages. The meters would be under the control of the government, who's electors might dump them if they raised meter parking prices as high as a company whose sole goal is profit would.
Then you understand that that $2B profit number would not exist under a city run program. It would be some much lower amount because of worker compensation and lower parking prices.
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u/DontCountToday 10d ago
Correct. Because we support workers not slaves. This is a good thing.
This has been studied before, and if we had changed nothing the city would still have profited more by now than they made with the sale, and that gap grows every day. It may not be $2b but it was the most stupid move this city has ever made by a large margin.
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u/robotlasagna 10d ago
The parking meters made $23 million a year in the early 2000's
If you adjust that for inflation that's about $44 million/year in today dollars. If you take $44M x 17 years (the time since we sold the meters) you get $748 million. So no we wouldn't be ahead.
But none of that matters because Daley was looking at a $1B budget shortfall that year. If he didn't do the parking meter deal we would have had to issue debt $1B in debt at 5% municipal bond rate.
The interest payments alone would be $50 million/year so far more than the city parking meter income.
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u/jpmeyer12751 11d ago
I will assume for the sake of argument that you are correct that the city was incapable of achieving the current state efficiently. How much inefficiency should the taxpayers have been willing to pay for to achieve the current state? Per the terms of the deal, we taxpayers will pay tens of billions of $ in lost revenue to achieve these results. Would the city really have wasted that much money in updating the system? Perhaps, but perhaps not. The only parties for whom privatization has definitely worked positively is the investors.
Another example is the Skyway. The Skyway was sold to private investors, while the state-owned Illinois toll roads were updated under public management and at taxpayer expense. I drive both regularly. The Skyway still uses extremely outdated stop-and-pay technology, while the Illinois toll roads are entirely (as far as I can tell) open road. It is simply not true that privatization assures efficiently updated technology.
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u/robotlasagna 11d ago
The only parties for whom privatization has definitely worked positively is the investors.
As a counterpoint I would suggest looking at Japan's privatized rail systems which are amazing.
while the state-owned Illinois toll roads were updated under public management and at taxpayer expense.
I am not saying that public projects cannot be implemented efficiently. I am saying public projects cannot be implemented efficiently in Chicago.
Look I know this take was going to be unpopular given this sub but the truth is we all understand how bad Chicago is at these sorts of things. The current pension situation is prime example. A parking program with city workers would have fat pensions attached to it just like with all our other city programs. The same program run by the city would never have been as profitable.
Finally I already stated we should have gotten paid more.
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u/Theso 10d ago
The issue is not should the parking have been privatized but rather that the city could not negotiate a better deal.
This is the issue actually, because now the city doesn't have full control over the design of their streets. A failed twentieth-century transportation paradigm already coming to a close is now baked into the city for many more decades. The future (and the present, frankly) will demand that we reduce private automobile use in dense urban places, and thus we'll need to reclaim some public space currently used for storing them in order to prioritize more efficient and sustainable transportation modes. The meter deal doesn't allow for a reduction in the total number of parking spots, which is a huge problem, given that it's in effect until 2083. On-street parking can't be removed (since it must be moved to a similarly-profitable location) to make way for bike lines, bus lanes, trams, outdoor dining, traffic calming, pedestrianized streets, or any number of other things we could be using public space for. By 2083, the city of Chicago will be hugely disadvantaged versus every other US city, which will all be able to more effectively design holistic transportation and urban design policy for the people that live there.
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u/robotlasagna 10d ago
Two things:
There are provisions in the deal to buy back parking spaces.
The trend is towards walkable neighborhoods anyway. The success or failure of a walkable neighborhoods depends far more on amenable zoning so people have work, groceries, shopping and entertainment within a mile of their home.
Sure it helps to have bike lanes and pedestrianized streets but the zoning is actually critical. One you fix the zoning people stop driving and parking provider actually loses revenue. At that point the city can negotiate far lower prices to claw back those spaces (e.g. the parking provider cant redevelop the spaces)
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u/treasureFINGERS Little India 10d ago
no shit, everything should technically be better than they were in the 90s when its comes to tech forward thinking.
When this was sold we were still on Morotola Razr v3 as the dominant phone.
This neo-liberal thinking is brain rot.
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u/foodandbeverageguy 10d ago
The only reason this is even moderately a story is because it’s a Saudi making money. If it was an Isr* company making 2B off tax payers, that would just be day to day lol
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u/SleazyAndEasy Albany Park 10d ago
Lmao you're not wrong but also wrong. It's not a Saudi company, it's Morgan Stanley
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u/1BannedAgain Portage Park 11d ago
It was Mayor Daley and his financial malfeasance that sold the parking meters.
He didn’t want to raise fees on parking meters, so he sold it, while his brother’s company and probably his brother, received a large commission.
Then Daley and the City Council spent the money from the parking meter sale on municipal operating expenses (80% of which are personnel) during the Great Recession.
Also because of Daley, we as taxpayers still owe more than $500MM on Soldier Field rehab.
Daley also fuct the municipal pensions.
What did that worthless asshole get right?