Parking meters, data centers, Board of Education elections.

The parking meter deal has hovered over Chicago for two decades now.

And when Daley sold the parking meters off, it was a little bit over $2 billion, I believe.

He was looking for a way to avoid raising property taxes.

The firm which bought the parking meters ended up recouping the cost in like two or three years.

And they profited enormously.

Was it longer than two years? Maybe it could have been.

Yeah, I think it was closer to eight or 11.

It was somewhere in the 10 range.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not a real long time.

I mean, it was, you know, given the length of the lease or the term of the lease That's a pretty quick way to recoup your money.

There's a sale of the parking meters.

And in the past 15 years alone, there have been calls left and right to try to find a legal avenue to try to reclaim those parking meters.

And, you know, Paul, you have argued several times in essays over the past year and a half, close to two years now, How legally we could cite how the sale of those parking meters was a violation or it went against the public interest.

Clearly it did.

You can make an argument for it.

But the best today the city council was able to do was to be able to hold up the sale of those parking meters and to extract some money.

And the finance committee approved a deal in which the city would be able to take, I think, a $7 million payment per year.

It amounts to about $75 million to approve the sale.

So we are getting a little bit of money.

$75 million is not... you know, a great amount, but they're all going to pat themselves on the back about about the sale.

They're going to say they did their job.

I thought it was interesting the way Pat Dowell, who's the finance chair, when she was talking about the sale, she talked about how it was a historic day.

It's not.

The parking meter deal has hovered over Chicago for two decades now.

And when Daley sold the parking meters off, it was a little bit over $2 billion, I believe.

He was looking for a way to avoid raising property taxes.

The firm which bought the parking meters ended up recouping the cost in like two or three years.

And they profited enormously.

Was it longer than two years? Maybe it could have been.

Yeah, I think it was closer to eight or 11.

It was somewhere in the 10 range.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not a real long time.

I mean, it was, you know, given the length of the lease or the term of the lease That's a pretty quick way to recoup your money.

There's a sale of the parking meters.

And in the past 15 years alone, there have been calls left and right to try to find a legal avenue to try to reclaim those parking meters.

And, you know, Paul, you have argued several times in essays over the past year and a half, close to two years now, How legally we could cite how the sale of those parking meters was a violation or it went against the public interest.

Clearly it did.

You can make an argument for it.

But the best today the city council was able to do was to be able to hold up the sale of those parking meters and to extract some money.

And the finance committee approved a deal in which the city would be able to take, I think, a $7 million payment per year.

It amounts to about $75 million to approve the sale.

So we are getting a little bit of money.

$75 million is not... you know, a great amount, but they're all going to pat themselves on the back about about the sale.

They're going to say they did their job.

I thought it was interesting the way Pat Dowell, who's the finance chair, when she was talking about the sale, she talked about how it was a historic day.

It's not.