City Says Revised Parking Meter Deal Saving Millions
By Chuck Sudo in News on May 8, 2014 4:30PM
Could Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s revised parking meter deal actually be saving the city money? That’s what the mayor’s office is claiming after auditing financial statements from Chicago Parking Meters LLC.
Here are some of the larger numbers from those statements, via Mike Brockway of the Expired Meter and DNAInfo Chicago.
“True up” payments (the money the city has to pay CPM when a parking spot is out of commission for a festival or street closure) have totaled $6.6 million since the revised contract went into effect last June. That’s an average of $1.65 million per quarter. The city was paying CPM an average of $10.2 million in the five quarters preceding the revised deal. The true-up payments were a major point of contention between the city and CPM once Emanuel took office and was one reason the mayor ordered an audit of the deal in October 2012.
Construction crews and utility companies who remove parking spaces and fareboxes to work are pitching in on those true up costs. The city received $2.5 million in fees from them last year and cited improved collections as the reason.
A new state law limiting where disabled drivers can park for free could result in the city paying a small fee, if one at all, for lost revenue. The city only has to reimburse CPM if the total number of parking spaces used by disabled drivers exceeds 6 percent of total parking spaces by the end of the year. Data from the first three months of 2014 indicate a significant drop-off in the number of disabled drivers taking advantage of free parking. Before the revised deal went into effect the city paid CPM $21.5 million in compensation.
Naturally there is celebrating going on at City Hall over the numbers. Finance Department spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said the audited statements are proof the revised deal “had real value, and that not one tax dollar is being paid that doesn't need to be paid. A very bad deal has been made a little less bad.” Even skeptical aldermen such as Scott Waguespack (32nd) were impressed by the numbers.
"It's a good thing to see (the true up) number go down," Waguespack said.
Overall, the city saved. We’ll take a cautiously optimistic approach to these numbers. As with any figures released by the Emanuel administration the question is will they hold up to an audit by the Office of the Inspector General. And don’t cry for Chicago Parking Meters, either. They’re still making money hand over fist from the deal. Although the financial statements shows CPM had a 4 percent drop in total revenue, their profits nearly doubled to $43.5 million in 2013 versus $20.5 million two years ago. The extended hours for downtown parking and another rate hike allowed CPM to collect $99.5 million in parking meter revenues last year.