They Still Get Paid

Nice job on that Parking Meter contract Shortshanks. And a fantastic job by the aldercreatures reading and reviewing the fine print...what did it take you assholes? Five minutes to pass it? Jagoffs:

• It's the gift that just keeps giving, to the private company the city hired to operate city parking meters.
  
  2 Investigator [...] reports on a buried part of the billion-dollar contract that may require the city to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the company.
  
  Here's the reason: There are street repairs, art fairs and block parties –- all events that prevent you from parking in normally legal spots. When those spots have parking meters along them, Chicago Parking Meter LLC, the company that got the billion-dollar deal with the city, can't make money, right?
  
  Actually, it's a great deal for the parking meter company. They usually make money because you have to plug the meter to park legally. When you can't park at a metered spot because of street construction or other projects, they still get paid.

Well that might be one reason why hundreds, maybe thousands of meters have popped up all over little used stretches of road that never saw much in the way of parking traffic. These out-of-the-way meters can be claimed as "blocked" when all the neighborhood festivals, parades and events block off the streets as staging areas and claimed against "lost revenue" by the connected firm.