Henyard – Chicago says “Hold My Beer”

Yesterday we talked a bit about Tiffany Henyard, and her penchant for milking the public cow in Dolton, costing the tax payers over $9 million and counting.

Well, seems Chicago has been playing fast and loose with taxpayer moolah as well, and under Lori Lightfoot allegedly has stiffed the folks who run their parking meters. The company, Chicago Parking meters, alleges the city owes ’em  big, and experts think the taxpayers could be on the hook for $100,000,000.

Chicago Parking Meters, the private company with a monopoly on the city’s paid street parking, filed a lawsuit in April asking the court to enforce an arbitration panel’s ruling that determined the city twice shorted the company under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Experts hired by the city and CPM agree the cost of one of the rulings, over an alleged scheme by the city to take advantage of parking space value fluctuations, could be more than $100 million, according to court records.

The city gets the bulk of the revenue from what are designated as reserve spaces, while the company takes all of the revenue from concession spaces.

“The concession contract with CPM also allows the City to mitigate the damages using means such as converting reserve spaces to concession spaces. Such actions would limit the impact of any damages awarded,” Jaworski said.

The parking firm alleged that Chicago took advantage of fluctuations in parking space valuations during the pandemic to sweeten its side of the deal, effectively taking money away from the company.

Gets a little hinky here – stay with me:

In November 2021, while parking space values were suppressed because of decreased 2020 revenues, Chicago designated 4,011 spots as reserve, taking near total ownership of those spots, according to the arbitrators. The move cost the city $10 million in payments to CPM.

Just two months later, when parking meter valuations rebounded based on updated 2021 revenues, the city returned 2,646 of those spaces to CPM for $13.8 million in credit while keeping the rest of the spots for itself as reserve spaces, according to the arbitrators’ ruling.

The tactic generated almost $11 million for the city in credits and new revenue, according to the arbitrators. But it also violated the parking meter deal by having an adverse effect on the parking meter system’s value that could have been reasonably expected, the arbitrators determined.

An appraiser for CPM determined the city’s maneuvers reduced the parking meter system’s value by $321.53 million. The city’s appraiser came up with a figure of $120.7 million, an amount cited as “more reliable” by arbitrators, according to court records.  Chicago Tribune

Not surprising that CPM used a maximum valuation – but when, no matter what, the floor appears to be over $100,000,000…. a lot of shamoleons involved. Hell, I can remember when not that many STATE budgets threw around sums like that. No matter what, though, sounds like CPM is going to control Chi-Raq parking for a long time to come ‘cuz the city got greedy and, what folks in the auto business used to say “jicked the books.” And got caught.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Crime, Democrats