The Wall Street Journal reports that:
“Cities and states across the nation are selling and leasing everything from airports to zoos—a fire sale that could help plug budget holes now but worsen their financial woes over the long run.
California is looking to shed state office buildings. Milwaukee has proposed selling its water supply; in Chicago and New Haven, Conn., it’s parking meters. In Louisiana and Georgia, airports are up for grabs.”
You can read the full article by clicking here .
It’s an interesting article. I would be reluctant to put city assets up for sale for the reasons stated in the article. My experience is that most times we have privatized a city function, such as turning over the management of the downtown parking garage to Diamond Parking, we have drawn some complaints from citizens. I can’t imagine negotiating a long-term lease with a private company which lets them make profits from street parking.
What do you think? Are there any city assets you readers suggest we sell?
How’s that Obama vote working out for yall? He sure is doing a good job isn’t he? 13.4 trillion of national debt as of today. That’s one more trillion since March of this year. Things don’t look so good now do they? Hmmm, I wonder who has been talking about this for the last year and a half. Could it have been that crazy conservative TCC? I think so. The downward momentum is gaining speed. The “Greatest Depression” is on the horizon. TCC
It’s too bad that voting for people with conservative economic policies always ends up putting religious bigots in office as well. Until that changes, my party of choice stays the same. I can deal with unemployment. I can’t and won’t deal with being told that is a Christian country with Christian values and that everybody else is some kind of second class citizen.
What kind of crap are you reading to come up with that? You have some perception issues that you need to deal with. Go online and find the entire footage of Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally that was on Saturday at the National Mall. There were between 500 and 650 thousand in attendance. If that doesn’t clue you in on what’s going on, nothing will. Don’t bother to comment on it until you watch it. TCC
I mention conservative religious values and the polarizing effect they have and you try to tell me that I can’t have a valid opinion until I watch a Glenn Beck speech from a date that was decided by divine intervention???
Thanks for proving my point.
You mentioned “conservative economic policies”, not “conservative religious values”. TCC
It would help if you reread the post. I addressed both.
“I can’t imagine negotiating a long-term lease with a private company which lets them make profits from street parking.”
Why not? Then it would get treated like a valuable resource instead of the vehicle storage welfare system it currently is.
Rather than selling off the on-street parking, it might be interesting to spin parking enforcement off into an enterprise fund. The same staff doing meter enforcement would continue to doing the same work, but they would get paid from the fund. Add a supervisor who’s main purpose would be to optimize the revenue generation from parking, while conforming with guidance from the Council. Optimize the number of parking spaces downtown (more brings in more revenue, smaller spaces are hard to use and cause insurance claims – find the most profitable balance (which would result in the greatest benefit to parkers AND the city)). Offer prepaid long term parking in reserved spaces? Work with streets planning to add parking near congested areas. Work with the council to allow/require smaller parking lots in commercial and retail developments then make sure on-street metered parking is build by the developer with the frontage improvements. Automate meter reading? Make the meter clocks run faster than real clocks so more parking tickets can be issued – Oh yeah, we already do that. Require on-street parking permits, sold for a modest fee, in order to park in residential neighborhoods in front of your own house? The city does own the street there too and I don’t recall a right to park anywhere in the Bill of Rights. Treat unpaid parking tickets like actual accounts receivable. Charge massive late fees and aggressively collect the revenue.
Transfer all three city owned parking garages (Landing, Transient Center, Valley Medical Center north) to the parking enterprise fund and let them collect revenue, issue tickets and set the parking fee (most of these garages are free most of the time or all of the time.
Observe what the commercial parking companies do and copy what works.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.
but the city spends over 70k to diamond while they are lucky to make 12k a year off it. that is wasteful. hire a peo to help monitor the garage and the city would bring in an additional 100k a year and also allow more parking stalls for teh transit center as it brings people into the city and sales tax can be used while helping to local shop owners