Former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s infamous parking meters deal could soon cost Chicagoans another pile of cash.
City attorneys are recommending aldermen approve a deal to settle for $15.5 million three long-standing disputes with the company that owns the meters, Chicago Parking Meters LLC. The proposal is part of the agenda released Thursday for the City Council’s upcoming Finance Committee meeting, where aldermen will also consider a package of police misconduct settlements totaling $62 million — an amount set to take the city well beyond its 2025 police settlement budget.
The parking meter settlement amount is far below the $322 million the company initially demanded to meet how much it said it lost because of city actions, and the $120.7 million figure city appraisers argued during arbitration was a more accurate estimate. Leaders in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration touted the payout as a good deal amid the broader bad one that city leaders have long tried and failed to get out of.
“We look forward to closing this chapter and focusing on a more constructive relationship with CPM moving ahead,” Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski wrote in a statement Thursday.
Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry said the arbitration deal resolves three previously reported disputes between the city and company.
Chicago Parking Meters first took legal action against the city in April 2024 to enforce the arbitrator’s ruling that it was twice shorted by Chicago under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
The company alleged Lightfoot’s administration violated the parking meter deal with an alleged scheme to take advantage of parking space value fluctuations and by temporarily suspending parking meter enforcement at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company’s claim that Lightfoot’s pandemic decree cost it millions comes despite the fact a Tribune investigation found the city issued more than 35,000 parking tickets during the time the mayor told motorists they wouldn’t get dinged for parking at expired meters.
Richardson-Lowry said the claims involved meter violation enforcement failures, the suspension of parking tickets and a “later dispute over the distribution of meter revenue.”
“This agreement brings an end to years of costly litigation at a fraction of the potential financial exposure,” she wrote.
Johnson’s administration also committed to “one year of enhanced parking enforcement” as a part of the deal, spokesperson Cassio Mendoza wrote in the statement. The administration did not reply when asked what “enhanced parking enforcement” entails.
After the staggering initial nine-figure cost estimates for the settlement, Jaworski said the deal could potentially be settled in part by giving Chicago Parking Meters revenue control over more parking spaces. The administration did not respond Thursday when asked if such a trade was part of the agreement.
In 2008, CPM bought 75 years of control over the city’s then publicly owned parking meter system for a one-time payment of $1.15 billion in a deal Daley proposed and the City Council approved. Daley quickly used much of the money to plug budget gaps.
Critics have long blasted the deal as a short-sighted fix that stripped Chicago of a valuable public asset — the meters once provided the city around $20 million annually in net income — and will make it difficult for Chicago to alter roadways for decades to come.
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In addition, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg determined CPM broke the city’s minority participation rules in a report last September. The company improperly claimed credit for a vendor that was not certified by the city as women- or minority-owned, Witzburg alleged.
CPM already has recouped its original $1.15 billion investment, plus hundreds of millions more and counting
The private firm made nearly $161 million in 2024, up $10 million from the year before, according to an audit of the parking system released in late April by KPMG. The haul bumps the company’s earnings since the deal was made to just under $2 billion, the looming milestone sure to prompt rage from Chicagoans for whom hating the lease has become a civic bonding ritual.
If approved by the Finance Committee, the deal could face a final vote from the full City Council next Wednesday.