On December 4, 2008, the City Council voted 40-5 to lease the city’s parking meters to Morgan Stanley. The vote was taken two days after the sale was made public and finalized. The lease agreement was disclosed to the full City Council on a Tuesday, with a vote taken on Thursday. How could 40 sitting aldermen, in good conscious, vote for such a complex transaction, without proper review? Mr. Mayor, your not even transparent with your own City Counsel, how can the citizens of Chicago trust that your being honest with them?
Morgan Stanley through their surrogates Chicago Parking Meters, LLC and LAZ Parking took possession of the meters on February 13, 2008. Under the terms of the lease agreement, Mayor Daley and the City Council have allowed Morgan Stanley to raise parking rates every year until 2013.
The Daley Administration Perspective
This lease agreement, almost, makes sense in a “Chicago” sort of way. Here is what happened from the cities perspective.
According to Mayor Daley’s recollection, he had been considering this deal for a couple of years. I believe him. He’s most likely been considering this meter deal since 2005, when he sold the four parking garages, the 9,178 spaces underneath Millennium Park to Morgan Stanley for a cool $563 million. You know the parking lots we built with public funds and had all those annoying construction problems we had to pay for, a few years back. Mayor Daley calls this current meter lease deal a “concession agreement”, I call it an “unconditional surrender”. He argues that the city made an informed financial decision in accepting Morgan Stanley’s bid.