The Chicago Parking Meter Debacle

Mayor Richard Daley is pitching the idea of one get-out-of-a-ticket-free card per year for drivers who slightly overstay their welcome at Chicago parking meters.

If aldermen go along, drivers would be able to successfully fight one ticket per car each year if the penalty is handed out within five minutes of the meter or pay ticket running out.

It’s part of the mayor’s attempt to placate the public after an unpopular lease of the city’s parking meters led to steep rate hikes and broken machines. Much of the one-time windfall is being used to prop up the city budget.

via Chicago parking meters: Daley offers drivers a break – chicagotribune.com.

Any Chicago residents out there with some strong opinions on the parking meter issue? If so, I’d like to hear from you.

Seeing this blog entry made my night! I've recently become a big fan of Matt Taibbi and his writings with Rolling Stone magazine, mostly covering the current financial madness going on in these United States. I'm glad the Daley privatization controversy is on his radar and would love to see him tackle the issue in a future column.

As a citizen of Chicago for nearly 10 years now, it is worrisome to me to see all of our fair cities' assets being sold off to private, for-profit corporations. First it was the Chicago Skyway, then the parking meters and perhaps next up for auction is Midway Airport. While I realize the city is in a dire financial mess and probably needs the money more than I understand (it's rough to have the mob breathing down your neck, I imagine), this seems like such a horrible long-term solution and one that, once we no longer control anything of value to sell, will leave us in a much worse situation. It would seem to me that selling all of the cities' parking meters would go a long way in covering budget gaps, yet we are still in need of money so badly that the airport must go as well? Either the recent city leadership has gotten us into the biggest financial mess imaginable, or they are not getting much value for these deals.

So if you have anything of value to say about all this madness, go tell it to Mr. Taibbi before we end up selling the clothes off our backs!