This bill, for $22 million to cover revenues the company lost from motorists using handicapped parking placards or license plates over a one year period, brings the current tab the city owes Chicago Parking Meters LLC to $50 million. more ›

Chicago Parking Meters, which earned $82 million in 2011, can bill the city for these lost fees under a provision in the 2008 contract they negotiated with the city. more ›

Our analogy comparing the parking meter deal to herpes becomes even more apt. more ›

The parking meter lease continues to be, like herpes, the gift that keeps on giving when you least expect it. more ›

The city's parking meter situation is certain to be a major issue in the upcoming mayoral election. With only $76 million left of a $1.2 billion lump sum payment for turning over control of the city's parking meters to a private consortium, Voters and media pundits will ask the prospective candidates in the next few months their positions on privatizing city services and whether it's wise to have done some privatizing of services the way Mayor Daley did: rammed through witha City Council rubber stamp and in secrecy. more ›

Chicago Parking Meter, LLC, the company that runs the city's privatized meters, will resume ticketing duties tomorrow after a year-plus hiatus. The company voluntarily halted enforcement last spring after the transition was plagued by problems including malfunctioning meter pay boxes. According to The Expired Meter, CPM has hired Serco, Inc., a firm that has helped with the city's parking ticket enforcement in the past, to aid them this time around. The Parking Ticket Geek breaks down the hierarchy in the comments of his story: more ›

The day before another hike in the city's parking rates goes into effect and a day after we looked back on the year that was in the Parking Meter Lease Saga, both the City and the company in charge of the meters have gone on the defensive. The new rates technically begin tomorrow, but technicians won't start phasing the new rates into the meters until Monday and it'll take most of the month of January to get the new rates locked in at all meters around the city. And as the new rates roll out and a new round of complaints get set to roll in, the defense begins. more ›

Seven months after they approved Mayor Daley's parking meter privatization deal, the City Council held a hearing to angrily express their outrage over the deal. This from the same City Council that voted 45-5 to approve the deal and, when one alderman complained about the lack of time for review, prompted the classic response from Ald. Mell (33rd), "How many of us read the stuff we do get, OK?. I try to. I try to. I try to. But being realistic, being realistic, it's like getting your insurance policy. It's small print, OK?" Small print, indeed. more ›

LAZ Parking has heard you loud and clear, Chicago, and they're going to help you out. No, they're not giving the money back to the city and no, they're not going to lower their rates. Instead, frustrated motorists that find themselves flummoxed by the new parking meter boxes will bed assisted by "Green Teams," who will be roaming the streets of neighborhoods with these boxes, distributing instructions on how to properly use them. The helpers earned their name thanks to the green t-shirts they'll be wearing when they pass out the instructions. According to the Sun-Times: more ›