When it comes to parking enforcement, City Council members should remember to be careful what they ask for.
Six years ago, Atlanta was in such poor financial shape that council members considered bake sales and selling plasma to keep the lights on at City Hall.
Enter PARKatlanta (if this was a movie, the sinister music would come in here), the local version of Milwaukee parking conglomerate Duncan Solutions, whose solution was “Free money!”
Duncan’s proposal was tantalizing: We’ll give you $5.5 million a year and you won’t have to lift a finger. In fact, you don’t have to pay your own meter readers; we’ll set up the meters, shake down your parking scofflaws and you just sit back and cash our checks.
The city’s only question was: What color ink shall we use to sign this contract?
Soon, PARKatlanta increased the number of meters from 800 to more than 2,500 and meter enforcement squads started writing tickets with ruthless efficiency. An electorate unfamiliar with finding citations flapping under their windshield wipers was aghast.
Then it hit city officials, there was no free lunch. The increase in city revenue (the city pulled in $2.1 million the year before PARKatlanta) was offset by public ire. And I mean collective public ire. Everybody hated PARKatlanta. I remember attending a public hearing in 2010 in a hall packed with angry citizens. Some were yelling.
That hasn’t changed much.
PARKatlanta’s contract is up next year and the city is holding public meetings to capture the mood. It’s still 2010.
At a meeting last week at Inman Middle School near Piedmont Park, resident Will Colby stood before City Council members and said the meter readers aren’t kind, rational or reasonable.
“When you’re incentivized for a profit, then that’s the kind of behavior you’re going to get; there’s something wrong here,” he said. “Parking meters don’t help businesses; they don’t help citizens. The problem is that these people are not public servants. They’re bounty hunters.”
Colby turned to about 100 fellow residents sitting in the same school auditorium where he long ago recited the Gettysburg Address — “of the people, by the people” — and asked anyone to raise their hand if they thought PARKatlanta was doing a good job.
Not one hand went up.
Anderson Moore, a PARKatlanta exec in the room, didn’t raise his hand. I’m sure he figured if he did there’d be a collective “Let’s git ‘im!”
Moore said he was glad to “get feedback” and “took copious notes.”
He said the company expects public blowback and PARKatlanta’s parent company has “a pretty proud heritage.”
Duncan Solutions should be proud. Before it got into parking meters, the company manufactured the Duncan yo-yo.
Moore noted that the meter readers — who are subcontractors of PARKatlanta — are not incentivized or on commission.
“We don’t know what the city’s plans are” in coming up with a new contract, he said, but “we love the city as much as anyone.”
A tough love, that is.
During the public meeting, Public Works Commissioner Richard Mendoza said, “At the moment, we have no plans at renewing the contract.”
The “at the moment” qualifier means Mendoza actually said nothing, although it was what the crowd wanted to hear.
Mayor Kasim Reed’s office, in an emailed response to questions, said, “There is no language in the current contract that provides for a renewal option. Whoever the new vendor is, it will be a new contract. The mayor has previously said that he expected complaints to go down after people got used to the new system, but that hasn’t happened with ParkAtlanta and it’s one of the reasons why he’s concerned.”
The city could even take the services back in-house, although it’s hard to envision city employees issuing tickets with the same verve that privatized workers do, as unlikable as they are.
And records show there’s money to be made sticking it to Atlantans for parking on their streets. Records provided by PARKatlanta to the city show the company has generated about $12.5 million a year in revenue the past four years (meter receipts plus citations). The company must pay the city about $5.25 million (about 41 percent of receipts) and then pays another 46 percent (or about $5.75 million a year) to meter enforcement, off-duty cops and towing and booting services. That leaves about $1.5 million that goes to the old yo-yo company.
After the meeting, City Councilman Kwanza Hall, whose district includes downtown, Midtown, Poncey Highland and other neighborhoods and has around 70 percent of the meters, said, “We have to think about how we treat our citizens and how we treat our guests. Is it only about the money?”
I think his question was rhetorical. He didn’t answer.
Hall noted the city was still new to the private parking enforcement game back when the council unanimously approved the PARKatlanta contract in 2009. And because of the recession, Atlanta was hard up for dough.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be setting the bar so high, so they don’t have to be so aggressive,” said Hall, who figures he may have paid 100 tickets during PARKatlanta’s rein.
But once money starts coming in, it’s hard to give it back.
The mayor says any new contract would start with at least $5.5 million flowing to the city.
Kinder, gentler parking enforcement?
Maybe.
But keep the checks coming in.
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