If you plan to park at a meter anywhere in Chicago, get ready to carry plenty of change: rates will quadruple next month for most spots in the city.
At most meters, where a single quarter now buys 60 minutes, the charge will spike to $1 per hour. And by 2013, it will cost $2 an hour to park at those same spaces.
The most expensive spots downtown will increase from $3 an hour to $6.50 the next five years under a lease deal Mayor Richard Daley announced Tuesday.
Despite the rate hikes, Daley hailed the parking meter plan as an innovative approach to surviving the city’s deepening budget woes. A private company has agreed to give City Hall an upfront payment of almost $1.2 billion to run Chicago’s parking meter system for the next 75 years.
Even that windfall won’t come close to solving the Daley administration’s budget problems, however. The mayor said the meter money won’t necessarily prevent further spending cuts, including employee layoffs.
City Hall recently cut the payroll by hundreds of workers and increased a slew of taxes and fees to plug a $469 million deficit. Still, Daley projects shortfalls of at least $200 million a year for several years.
“That could grow. That could get much bigger” if the nation’s economic recession worsens, said Daley, continuing months of gloom-and-doom warnings.
Paul Volpe, the city’s chief financial officer, said revenues that tend to rise and fall with the general economy are coming in even slower than officials had projected. The city expected to get about $10.9 million from its real estate transfer tax revenue in November, but collected $4.3 million, the worst month in a decade.
The City Council’s Finance Committee is scheduled to debate the parking meter lease agreement Wednesday, with a final vote of the full council expected Thursday. Aldermen have given quick and overwhelming approval to all of Daley’s groundbreaking privatization efforts in recent years, eagerly accepting enormous checks for long-term leases of the Chicago Skyway toll road ($1.83 billion), downtown parking garages ($563 million) and Midway International Airport ($2.5 billion).
That big money for City Hall has meant higher costs for the public. Under private operators, it costs 50 percent more to drive on the Skyway and almost 40 percent more to leave your car for an hour at Millennium Park’s garage.
Daley dodged questions Tuesday about what other assets the city could rent for cash: “We’re not going to be telling you this now.”
The mayor’s plan for spending the parking-meter money represents an about-face from a year ago, when he rejected the notion of using any of the money from the long-term lease to help deal with immediate budget gaps.
“You can’t just take this and say, ‘Let’s fill in the budget,'” Daley said at the time. “It’s not going to work that way. That would be awful for the budget.”
On Tuesday, Daley said $400 million from the parking meter deal will go into a long-term reserve, but $325 million will be spent to shore up city budgets through 2012. Another $324 million is headed toward a fund officials said “may be used to help bridge the period until the nation’s economy begins to grow again.” The city also is earmarking $100 million for programs helping low-income people.
The winning bid for the parking meters came from a company formed largely by three infrastructure funds run by New York-based Morgan Stanley, which also won the lease for downtown government-owned garages in 2006.
The mayor’s nephew, William Daley Jr., works for Morgan Stanley and lobbies state and Cook County officials on the firm’s behalf. Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Marie Ali said William Daley Jr. had no involvement in the Chicago deal.
The Daley administration said the winners merely offered the biggest check of any qualified bidder.
City officials said rates on many meters had not been increased in more than 20 years. But the increases come on top of a blizzard of other recent tax and fee increases that make it more expensive to live and play downtown.
After Cook County leaders pushed the sales tax in Chicago to 10.25 percent, the city’s new budget includes an expansion of red-light cameras, more aggressive booting of cars with unpaid parking tickets, and higher taxes on downtown parking garages and tickets to sporting events and shows.That trend wasn’t lost on drivers hunting for parking spots Tuesday.
“It just never stops,” said Mark Davino, who dashes outside his Lakeview pizzeria every two hours to feed the meter. “We’re getting hit from every angle.”
Berwyn’s Edwin Ramos said he may stop driving into Chicago and invest in a bus pass.
“Gas prices come down, but then the price to ride the bus and park goes up, so one way or another they’re getting us for more money,” he said.
Aldermen in the wards with the most metered spots seemed more open to the coming changes.
“We are at the receiving end of everyone’s daily commute,” said Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd), whose downtown ward has 4,883 meters.
Reilly and Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) said higher meter rates would lead to quicker turnover of spots near businesses in their wards.
Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd Ward includes part of the Loop, said parking meters will remain cheaper than garages for short-term parking. “People realize downtown parking is at a premium,” he said.
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INSIDE THE PARKING DEAL
Q. What will it cost to park at a downtown meter?
A. The $3 an hour fee to park at prime Loop spots increases to $3.50. After that, the price goes up 75 cents a year through 2013, when it hits $6.50 an hour. Elsewhere downtown, the $1 an hour will double to $2 next year and hit $4 an hour in 2013.
Q. What will it cost to park at meters in city neighborhoods?
A. Meters that now cost a quarter for an hour will increase to $1, with an extra quarter tacked on each year through 2013, when the price reaches $2 an hour.
Q. When will the new rates take effect, assuming the Chicago City Council approves the deal?
A. On Jan. 1 officially, but it will take time to change all the meters.
Q. Will I need a pocket full of quarters?
A. All meters must be fitted for credit cards by summer 2011.
Q. Who will write the parking tickets for expired meters?
A. The city will write tickets, but the new operator will be able to as well. The city will continue to collect and keep fine payments.
Q. Will there be more meters?
A. That’s up to the city.
Q. Are parking garage rates likely to go up as a result of this?
A. It’s not likely downtown, aldermen say, because it will still cost less to park at meters for a few hours, even at $6.50 an hour, unless a driver gets a low early-bird, all-day rate. Outside the Loop, higher rates could push some all-day meter feeders into garages and parking lots.
Q. What will the city get?
A. Nearly $1.2 billion at the start of the 75-year lease.
Q. Is Chicago the first city to privatize parking?
A. Other cities, such as Detroit and Washington, have privatized parking meter management for comparatively short periods. So has Madrid. But City Hall officials say Chicago would be the first to lease them on a long-term basis.
Q. What can people who don’t like the idea do?
A. They can call their alderman, who will vote on the plan Thursday, and voice their objections. In Oak Park, the Village Board rolled back parking meter increases this fall back to $1 an hour after initially raising them to $1.50 in the busiest areas.
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WORD ON THE STREET
“You park illegally as much as possible, use more side streets or be strategic about things like that.”
— Jacob Shapiro, 26, who only parks at meters as a last resort
“They’re already a pain, but that’s a lot more quarters you have to carry around, that’s for sure.”
— Weston Eidson, 28, student who lives in Roscoe Village
“It’s a little pricey, and [meters] are hard to come by. I can see it’s better than parking in a lot, but it’s still a little much.”
— Stephanie Olson, 33, of Mayfair
“They’re going to make people go buy a rental spot. People are looking to save wherever they can.”
— Mark Davino, 38, who parks at a metered spot outside his Lakeview restaurant for up to 12 hours a day, feeding the meter every two hours
“They’re just taking more money out of a regular working person’s pocket, to feed a city that has more than enough money to do what they do. “
— Edwin Ramos, 27, of Berwyn, who cleans up stores around Chicago
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See a map of all the city’s parking meters online at chicagotribune.com/meters
