Reilly rips Rahm’s parking tax plan
Alderman says rate hike would be bad for businesses
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pothole- patching plan to raise the city’s parking tax — to 22 percent on weekdays and 20 percent on weekends— is not the only hit motorists will be asked to absorb in 2015.
Chicagoans who lease their vehicles — whether in the city or suburbs — will be requred to pay a 9 percent “personal property lease tax” — up from 8 percent currently. The increase also impacts businesses that lease software, printers and computers. But roughly $ 60 million of the $ 140 million- a- year take is expected to come from auto leasing, aldermen were told Tuesday on the eve of the mayor’s budget address.
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly ( 42nd) and Marc Gordon, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association, homed in on the parking tax hike. They called it piling on and a huge mistake, even for a purpose as pivotal and popular as filling potholes.
The parking tax hike would be the third in the nearly four years since Emanuel took office.
It’s a popular punching bag for the mayor, in part, because it’s part of a larger plan to discourage driving by building protected bike lanes and bus rapid transit lanes that shrink the number of lanes available for passenger vehicles.
“The city has been leaning heavily on garage taxes and, eventually, you hit a tipping point where higher parking costs negatively impact tourism and business,” Reilly wrote Tuesday in an email to the Chicago Sun- Times.
By raising the parking tax by 10 percent on weekdays and 11 percent on weekends, Emanuel hopes to generate the $ 10 million needed to hire 80 employees and staff 18 additional crews. That would double the year- round army assigned to patch potholes and repair crumbling streets. But Reilly maintained there are other ways to find the money without discouraging suburbanites from driving downtown to shop, dine or go to the theater and without discouraging tourism that drives the downtown economy at a time when hotel occupancy is rising.
“I believe we can cobble together the $ 10 million per year needed by squeezing savings out of other departments and considering increased penalties for loading and tow-zone abuse,” Reilly wrote.