Judge: Nashville must ditch its parking agreement

Nashville violated its own laws while negotiating a deal to outsource its parking meters, a judge ruled Friday. Now, the judge said, the city has to ditch its $300 million deal and start from scratch.

The ruling, handed down by Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle, could jeopardize the city’s budget, which relies on a quick influx of cash from the parking deal.

City officials in April said they planned to hand over on-street parking management and enforcement to LAZ Parking Georgia LLC.

Nashville was to get $34 million up front, and more than $300 million total over the life of the 30-year contract. City leaders were depending on the $34 million infusion to balance this year’s budget.

Now that the deal has been negated in court, newly elected Mayor John Cooper will need to find another way to balance the budget by the end of the fiscal year in June 2020. Cooper had already pledged to work to reverse the parking deal.

“This parking privatization was a bad deal for the taxpayers,” Cooper said in a statement. “A judge has now struck it down. It’s time to move forward and develop a better plan to manage our sidewalks, curbsides, and parking spaces.”

DEAL VIOLATED

CITY LAW, JUDGE SAID

NTN+, a company that submitted a competing bid for the contract, accused city officials of obfuscation throughout the process.

The city’s procurement appeals board unanimously upheld the decision to award LAZ Parking the contract. NTN+ appealed, taking the matter to court.

Lyle agreed with NTN+’s argument, saying the deal with LAZ Parking was improper because the city had violated “explicit regulations” in city law while selecting a vendor.

City officials rejected the competing bid from NTN+ because it didn’t initially include a required pricing worksheet. But once NTN+ was notified of the error, the company provided the worksheet.

Lyle said city law requires “allowing corrections of mistakes after proposals have been submitted and before selection of a contractor has been awarded.”

“In this case those steps were not followed with the result that [NTN+] was wrongfully disqualified from the selection process for the contract,” Lyle wrote in her order. “Under these circumstances, Metro law requires that the disqualification of [NTN+] must be reversed.”

Lyle said the process must “begin anew” because elements of the company’s confidential bid had been made public during the court battle.

Council member Freddie O’Connell criticized the city’s approach to the parking deal.

“I think a better approach is for Metro to pursue modernization on its own through procurement of better infrastructure and better policies and procedures related to enforcement,” he said.

Yihyun Jeong contributed to this report.

Reach Adam Tamburin at 615-726-5986 and atamburin@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter @tamburintweets.