Chicago Dems Allowed Its Parking Meters to be Sold to a Private Company, Rates to Increase
Seventeen years ago, Chicago privatized its parking meters and sold them off to a private company that is now selling the meters to another private company.
Etienne Note: This article also appears in “Government”, Media and Academia Criminality Exposed, A digest of HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of articles exposing and suggesting inter-generational organized crime’s control of the “Government,” Media and Academia by the Art of Liberty Foundation. You can view the other articles or subscribe on Telegram: https://t.me/Government_Scams
Seventeen years ago, Chicago privatized its parking meters and sold them off to a private company that is now selling the meters to another private company. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has the opportunity to buy back the meters, but he said the cost is too high.
When the city sold the lease for the meters, parking cost $3 per hour – the current cost is $7 per hour to park downtown.
Former Mayor Richard Daley convinced the City Council to swiftly sell a 75-year lease of city’s parking meters in 2008 for $1.15 billion to help plug a city budget deficit. The company that bought the meters has already brought in nearly $2 billion in revenue from the deal, with 57 years still to go on the deal.
Chicago Democrats just allowed the city’s parking meters to be sold to another private company.
“Parking downtown at a meter spot costs $7 an hour, up from $3 an hour when the city owned the parking meters.”
The company who owned the meters is making billions, “They made about $2 billion.”
“The Johnson administration considered buying the meters back, but the mayor said the sale price was way too expensive.”
“The current owner has now flipped it. Mayor Brandon Johnson said it sold to an unknown company for at least twice as much as the original price”
Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday said his administration would not seek to buy back Chicago’s parking meters, after weighing an attempt to get out of what he called “the worst deal in the history of municipal finance.”
Johnson confirmed Tuesday afternoon that his office had looked into the possibility of buying back the city’s parking meters from Chicago Parking Meters LLC, the company that purchased them under former Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008, but determined the cost was too high.
“I want to put the rumors to bed. We are not pursuing a purchase of the city’s parking meters at this time,” Johnson said.
Daley convinced the City Council to swiftly sell a 75-year lease of city’s parking meters in 2008 for $1.15 billion to help plug a city budget deficit. The company that bought the meters has already brought in nearly $2 billion in revenue from the deal, with 57 years still to go on the deal.
While the company that bought the parking meters is now looking to sell its lease, Johnson said it likely would have cost the city at least twice as much as the original $1.15 billion price tag for the parking meters.
“We had our teams run the numbers and look at every variation of a potential deal. However, the more we looked into it, the more problems emerged,” Johnson said. “The final purchase price was far too high; much more than we initially received for the sale, and higher than most reasonable assumptions would support.”
Johnson said the city would have had to take on a massive amount of debt to buy back the parking meters, and nearly 100% of any parking revenue collected by the city would have to go to paying off that debt for the next 40 years, and effectively force the city to raise parking rates every year to cover that cost.
The mayor also said the city would have faced the risk of parking habits changing significantly over the life of the contract, such as a rise in the number of self-driving cars or a dramatic increase in the use of public transit leading to a significant drop in parking revenue needed to pay off the cost of the contract.
“In short, this purchase would have made a bad deal even worse. The price is too high and requires debt service payments that extend too far and impose too much risk. Chicagoans would most likely end up footing the bill yet again for this original decision to privatize our parking,” Johnson said.
The Everything Bundle – The Ultimate Voluntaryist Sampler and/or Homeschool Curriculum
The Everything Bundle Includes THREE (3) books from Larken Rose!
The Everything Bundle is the ULTIMATE sampler of the best of voluntaryist thought. It is $115 in the Art of Liberty Foundation Store OR you can get one free including signed, personalized high-resolution hard cover versions of BOTH of Etienne’s books by “Going Paid” as a Founding Member of the Substack.
Simply “Go Paid” or Upgrade and we will reply with details. Domestic shipping is included, International includes $10 S&H credit and we will reply with total cost.
The Everything Bundle – The Ultimate Sampler of Liberty
“Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! by Etienne de la Boetie2 –
To See The Cage Is to Leave It – 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many by Etienne de la Boetie2
Anarchy Exposed! – A former police officer reports on his investigative journey by Shepard the Voluntaryist and Larken Rose
The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose
Sedition, Subversion and Sabotage – Field Manual #1 by Ben Stone, The Bad Quaker, and Ken Yamarashi
What Anarchy Isn’t – A short pamphlet by Larken Rose… The perfect introduction to peaceful anarchy – Free On-line Version Here
Three Friends Free – A Children’s Story of Voluntaryism
The Liberator is a 64GB wafer flash drive filled with books in PDF/ePub including BOTH of Etienne’s books: “Government” AND To See the Cage is to Leave It, documentaries, podcasts, MP3s, short videos, and music from the truth movement’s leading artists. New 2025/2026 V2.3 Version!! The credit card-sized format makes it convenient to keep in your wallet to share and copy easily. You are authorized and encouraged to copy your Liberator for your friends AND the Liberator includes stickers that print on readily available Avery label paper to wrap commodity 64GB flash drives available on eBay for as little as $3 each.
Comments ()