“In this case, outsourcing parking-enforcement duties would benefit the taxpayers among Hermosa Beach’s population of slightly less than 20,000. For an example of how such a switch might work, Hermosa officials could travel about 45 miles south along the coast to Newport Beach, where the city successfully moved to outsource parking enforcement last year.
“We have seen increased revenues with the private company operating the meter program,” Newport Councilwoman Leslie Daigle said.
Since Newport made the move, the city “has seen a 24.4 percent increase in parking-meter revenues over last year and salary savings of approximately $500,000 from outsourcing parking meter operations,” according to Tara Finnigan, a spokeswoman for the city.
Privatizing parking meter duties also is a national trend, as detailed in a recent study by the libertarian Reason Foundation. Chicago and Indianapolis have had success with outsourcing parking enforcement, and other cities including New York, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Memphis, Tenn., and Harrisburg, Pa., are considering privatization proposals.”
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This means that the cost for parking in the city has gone UP, and that they are vigorously enforcing the parking laws, some of which are probably new in order to drive up revenue.
It looks like their revenue from parking fines and PD administration fines are about ~$2.6 million per year over the past ~5 years. If their revenue goes up about 24.4% with this privatization, that means they are taking in an additional $634,400.
So, it looks like the citizens are paying an additional ~$134,000/year to privatize the system. (This does assume that most of the revenues are coming from local citizens, and not tourists, but if you live in an area where most of the meters are used by local citizens, they are STILL paying for it.) Whether they are paying “taxes” or “fines” doesn’t really matter, the point is they are still paying for it.
What Newport Beach DID lose were some of the few decent-paying jobs with benefits for local citizens. Tell me…how did the citizens of Newport Beach fare in this deal?
As far as the other cities being “successful” in their attempts to privatize, not sure about the other cities (not enough time to research right now), but this was a HUGE deal in Chicago, fraught with all sorts of fraud and abuse. Needless to say, the citizens of Chicago absolutely did NOT benefit from the privatization. Based on the fact that they are calling Chicago’s privatization debacle a “success” makes the rest of their claims dubious, IMHO.
“For $1.15 billion, paid upfront, the City Council approved a plan championed by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008 that privatized Chicago’s 36,000 meters for 75 years. In a deal that was widely criticized for selling taxpayers short, Chicago Parking Meters was given the right to keep all meter revenues until 2084. Drivers have since seen sharp increases in parking rates under the deal.
After leaving office a year ago, Daley, along with his former corporation counsel and two top press aides, went to work for Katten Muchin Rosenmann LLP, the law firm that handled the parking meter deal for the city.
Since the meter deal took effect, city officials have paid the parking meter company more than $2 million in what they call “true-up adjustments” to make up for parking spaces taken out of service.
The amount billed for those adjustments skyrocketed in the first nine months of the 2011 budget year, to $14 million — a sum Emanuel is refusing to pay. The company hasn’t submitted its claim for the last three months of the year yet.”
“Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) — Chicago drivers will pay a Morgan Stanley-led partnership at least $11.6 billion to park at city meters over the next 75 years, 10 times what Mayor Richard Daley got when he leased the system to investors in 2008.
Morgan Stanley, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Allianz Capital Partners may earn a profit of $9.58 billion before interest, taxes and depreciation, according to documents for a $500 million private note sale by their Chicago Parking Meters LLC venture. That is equivalent to 80 cents per dollar of projected revenue. Standard Parking Corp., which runs 30,000 spaces at the city’s O’Hare and Midway airports, earned 4.84 cents on that basis last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The deal illustrates how Wall Street banks, recipients of more than $300 billion in taxpayer bailouts in the worst credit collapse since the Great Depression, are profiting from helping states and cities close record recession-induced deficits by selling bonds and leasing public properties. Chicago gave up billions of dollars in revenue when it announced in 2008 that it leased Morgan Stanley its 36,000 parking meters, the third- largest U.S. system, for $1.15 billion to balance its budget, said Alderman Scott Waguespack.”
