The complaints keep coming for the company that took over management and operations of Chicago's 36,000 parking meters, earlier this year.
Even though the $1.2 billion deal is completed, Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) is calling for a public hearing to address the issues.
City officials have been flooded with complaints from drivers who say the city's parking meters are broken, stuffed with quarters, and charging the wrong rates. When the private company, LAZ, took over the city's parking meters, rates skyrocketed. Hairston says the company has been engaging in deceptive business practices, and has failed to meet city requirements for hiring minority contractors.
Hairston wants LAZ to reimburse drivers who lost money at broken meters. We want to know what you think. Have the parking headaches gotten any better? Post a message here.
Comments (1)
I think the parking meter 'strategy' is costing businesses money, citizens and visitors money. Shouldn't a beautiful city like Chicago want people to come in and enjoy it? Not all parts of the city have parking lots--just meters. A hair cut at one of our many shops is now the cost of the haircut and the huge parking meter cost.
Mayor Daley cries poor now, but the very businesses that can bring in money via taxes are now losing revenue because people are opting to go elsewhere. Chicago is gonna be a lot more poor! And the one gentleman is right--you can't carry as many quarters in your pockets as you would need for even a little outing.
A person would need about 7 quarters per hour!
The LAZ company admits they weren't prepared for the overwhelming scope of the job, but it isn't hard to figure out that meters will constantly need to be emptied. If the meters collect from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and the meter was used constantly there would be 84 quarters in one day.
I'm going to call the whole plan L-A-Z-Y! Our city officials were too 'lazy' to work on a better parking plan, too 'lazy' to read LAZ's meter take-over and ensure that it was adquate and too 'lazy' to seek a quick remedy to LAZ's poor performance. Normally when a vendor doesn't deliver his side of the contract, the contract can be nullified. Officials should be all over this if they value the business side of this City! City tax dollars shrink with lack of business revenue and all these great shops can potentially go out of business. That's okay. They can just raise the meter costs to 50 cents every eight minutes...oh yeah, no one will need to park downtown any more.
Posted by Tracy Duckworth | April 23, 2009 9:36 AM
Posted on April 23, 2009 09:36