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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before: The Chicago Parking Meter Story |
| 2025-04-19 |
| [HotAir] Hizzoner Brandon Johnson is having trouble with Chicago’s bills, between the Chicago teachers pension plan and their recently negotiated 1/3rd increase in pay. But his hands are tied by the windy city’s long history of electing Democrats, to whit: But no matter how he postures and bloviates, it still doesn't change the fact that Brandon has no bucks for all the big talk. You would think with all the revenue streams available in a major city and the way he's jacked taxes up (the ones voters have allowed him to), Brandon could squeak something out to ease the burden on his constituents, right? And this is where I stumbled across one of the worst examples of civic...hmm. Schmaybe 'malfeasance' is the word? It's too awful for mere incompetence. Whatever it was, this deal done by Mayor Richard Daley in 2008, during that financial crisis, has screwed the city of Chicago royally and I never heard about it until today. To close a city budget deficit that year, Mayor Daley sold every last parking meter space to a private consortium for $1.15B. Every last dime collected on 36,000 metered parking spaces in the city leaves the city. Every time a street is closed and those meters cannot collect parking fees, the city must compensate Chicago Parking Meters, LLC - the private investor-owned company - for every dime those meters would have made had the street not been blocked. The deal is for a schweet seventy-five years. ... As of 2023, the investors in CPM LLC have recouped their investment plus $500 million, and still have 60 years left on the deal. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #3 With no parking meter revenue there would be no parking meter kickbacks. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2025-04-19 17:29 |
| #2 'Cool Hand Luke' copycat gets 14 years in prison for cutting heads off parking meters |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2025-04-19 17:28 |
| #1 Of course the cops could stop writing tickets for parking meter expiration. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2025-04-19 16:56 |