Rahm: Bad parking deal got a little bit better
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday there’s nothing he can do to make a “bad” parking meter deal that’s “worse than we knew” into a good one, but he made it better by swapping a longer paid parking day for free neighborhood parking on Sundays and wiping $1 billion in future liabilities off the books.
“The choice is, live with what we have for the next 71 years or eliminate a [$1 billion] bill taxpayers would have to fork over the next 71 years, get free Sundays in our neighborhoods and pay by cell [phone]. That’s a choice the City Council should debate and decide,” he said.
Some aldermen have argued that Emanuel created the potential for yet another potential windfall for Chicago Parking Meters LLC by trading free Sunday parking in Chicago neighborhoods for a longer parking day.
Emanuel flatly rejected that argument. To drive the point home, he read aloud the names of some of the Chicago neighborhoods in line for the Sunday parking freebie in alphabetical order, starting with Albany Park and ending with Wicker Park.
“Greater downtown vs. the neighborhoods. That’s the trade. On the other hand, remember: Today, we pay for Sundays. Eighty-one percent of the meters in the city — over 70 neighborhoods — will be free,” he said.
Emanuel’s $1 billion savings estimate starts with the fact that the company’s reimbursement claims of $50 million over the last two years for metered parking spaces taken out of service because of policing actions have been settled for $8.9 million.
Since similar claims would have been made in each of the next 71 years — and won’t be now that the company has agreed to accept the city’s reimbursement formula — that adds up to more than $1 billion in savings, the mayor contends.
“This was a bad deal . . . and there’s nothing you can do to make a bad deal a good deal. It is worse than we knew, when the fact is we were gonna pay out $20 milliona-year over the next 71 years. So we’re stuck with this,” Emanuel said Wednesday.
Closed-door briefings are now under way to try to sell the mayor’s plan to aldermen who took a political beating for approving the original parking meter deal.
Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) said, “You should ask us the question: Why the hell did we vote for it in the first place?”