Just five months before the city’s controversial contract with PARKatlanta expires, Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration has frustrated several city council members by not saying how it plans to proceed with parking enforcement next year.
Owned by the Wisconsin-based company Duncan Solutions, PARKatlanta has been writing tickets — and consistently angering a huge number of residents, who complain about overly strident enforcement for profit — since entering into the contract with then-mayor Shirley Franklin’s office in 2009. The contract expires in September.
The deal guarantees the city more than $5 million a year, and has allowed the company to pocket about $6 million during the past four years.
Public Works Commissioner Richard Mendoza said the administration hasn’t decided if the city will take over parking enforcement, if it will issue a request for companies to bid on a new contract, or if it will be a combination of the two.
“All our options, we’re keeping open,” Mendoza told the council’s Transportation Committee last week.
That didn’t sit well with several council members.
“I’m very disappointed in this,” Councilman Alex Wan said of Mendoza’s presentation. “This is something I could have written a year and half ago. It doesn’t say anything new. I’m very concerned that because we’ve burned so much of the time fuse – and perhaps that was by design – that we’re going to end up repeating the same follies and errors that we’ve been enduring since 2010.”
Councilwoman Felicia Moore said of Mendoza’s presentation: “You’ve not told us anything.”
The council held a series of public hearings in December, to get residents' views on how parking should be enforced. Mendoza said his department is considering that feedback, and has studied other cities parking enforcement — including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston.
PARKatlanta, which increased the number of meters from 800 to more than 2,500, has been a target of public ire since the contract was signed. That shone through during the December meetings. As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at one meeting, a resident asked those among the about 100 in attendance to raise their hand if they thought PARKatlanta was doing a good job.
No hands went up.
Transportation Committee Chairwoman Yolanda Adrean said a cost-benefit analysis should be done so that the council can understand the difference between contracting with an outside company or providing enforcement with city employees.
“The question becomes: To what extent does the council want to … use the authority we have and set policy?” Moore said. “Or is the council good with waiting [to see] … what the administration has decided for us?”
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