Parking Meter Firm: Uh, Our Bad
By Marcus Gilmer in News on May 5, 2009 5:50PM
The recent privatization of the city's parking meters has proven to be one big mess and LAZ Parking, the firm now in charge of the meters, admits that it wasn't prepared. In a report filed by the Tribune, a temporary employee who worked for LAZ said, "The city has three types of meters. We had plenty of devices to reprogram two kinds of meters, but not nearly enough for the last type. As a result, the new stickers being put on the meters did not match what many of the meters were charging." The company used security guards and temporary employees to make the transition. Another hang-up, according to the Trib's source? Batteries.
LAZ found that many of the city's meters were inoperable because the 9-volt batteries that power the meters were dead, company officials said. But LAZ did not have an inventory of batteries to solve the problem."One day, I saw a supervisor hand a guy $20, and he told him to go to Home Depot to buy some batteries," a worker said. "You pay the city over $1 billion for the parking meter concession and you're buying batteries in $20 batches?"
As for now, the city's Department of Revenue claims that only 278 out of around 36,000 meters aren't working and LAZ chairman Alan Lazowski told the Trib the company is, "off to a great start fixing it," and added, "We are very proud of the fact that we've gotten on top of problems."