The $1.2 billion, 75 year lease of Chicago’s parking meters is incredibly shortsighted, especially in light of the parking meter rates that this lease will raise. The city needs $150 million? Fine, but don’t give away huge potential revenue to cover the shortfall.
Last year the parking meter revenue was almost $20 million, and approximately two-thirds of the meters cost 25 cents per hour which is really much too low anyway. At that rate, you don’t get any turnover of meters because workers at nearby places park and just feed the meter every couple of hours and then people who want to shop can’t find any place to park. Raising those 25 cent meters to $1 will give the city an additional $40 million per year which doesn’t cover the budget shortfall, but over 75 years will give the city an additional $3 billion dollars. Throw in the Sundays and Holidays that we will now have to pay for (about $11 million) and that’s another $825 million over 75 years. My math says that $3.825 billion dollars is greater than $1.2 billion dollars by quite a lot.
Since just increasing the 25 cent meters will not cover the budget shortfall, one thing that will, and would also make this city a safer place to drive and walk, would be to start ticketing drivers who don’t stop at stop signs. We live near a park, and maybe one out of every 20 drivers actually comes to a complete stop - and there are little kids playing! I have no idea how more kids aren’t hit by cars in this city.
Anyway, I have no idea how much the fine is for running a stop sign, but let’s say it’s $75. If one traffic cop in the city writes 8 tickets an hour, 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, that comes out to $1.25 million per year. If you hire an additional 85 traffic cops, you could pay their salaries and also rake in $100 million per year. Similarly, you could enforce the hands-free cellphone law to close the budget hole and make the streets slightly safer. Budget crisis solved and no future revenue is given up by the city.