CHICAGO — It’s the gift that just keeps giving, to the private company the city hired to operate city parking meters.CBS 2 Investigator Pam Zekman reports on a buried part of the billion-dollar contract that may require the city to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the company.
Here’s the reason: There are street repairs, art fairs and block parties –- all events that prevent you from parking in normally legal spots.
When those spots have parking meters along them, Chicago Parking Meter LLC, the company that got the billion-dollar deal with the city, can’t make money, right?
Actually, it’s a great deal for the parking meter company. They usually make money because you have to plug the meter to park legally. When you can’t park at a metered spot because of street construction or other projects, they still get paid.
“Nothing that the city has done with this parking deal has sounded right,” consumer David Smith said.
CBS 2 found the payback deal buried in the city’s contract with Chicago Parking Meters. Attorney Clinton Krislov has charged in a lawsuit that the deal is illegal for several reasons.
As for the lost income part, “the city has to pay compensation to the parking meter company for every meter that it pulls out of the system, even for a day,” Krislov said.
Records obtained by CBS 2 for the first quarter of 2009 of the contract lists street by street the lost income for February March and April of 2009 totaling more than $106,000.
That amount will surely go up for the spring and summer — the seasons for street closings.
“The city will be paying perhaps as much as $500,000 a year to protect the revenue stream for those guys,” Krislov said.
Those guys demanded more than $9,000 for lost income along North Franklin — a claim that surprised Will Leonhard. And a street resurfacing project along south Wabash cost the company more than $11,000 in lost revenue it wants the city to pay.
According to a document attached to the city contract, the most valuable spaces in the city are along Madison Street — 68 of them.
If they were out for a year, the company could expect to be reimbursed a small fortune. Krislov estimates it could cost $559,057 a year, or about $8,000 a space.
“Pretty valuable meter. You could condo that meter,” he said.
A city spokesman says that $84,000 was deducted from the company’s first claim, to pay the city back for its costs helping the company through its very troubled start up. In the future, similar negotiations will be done.
CBS 2 will be checking out those future claims when they’re submitted.
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.