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SEIFFE:  Chicago-On-Michigan

Monday, October 16, 2006

By Ralf Seiffe

Mayor Daley’s Wednesday announcement that the city would forge ahead another year without a tax increase was certainly good news.  If the measure of municipal success is the fixity of what’s taxed and the stability of rates, then Daley appears to deserve his reputation as “America’s Best Mayor”.  But by Friday, reality set in when the same Mayor announced he’d leased the underground parking facilities to a private concern for a more than a half-billion dollars in cash.  The Mayor’s justification was that people of Chicago can’t wait for the garages to produce revenues in the future, they need the money now. 

Prudent stewards usually abhor selling capital assets to fund current expenses.  It is sort of like putting the family silver on e-bay to pay one’s bar bill or gambling debts. Liquidating assets is a strategy more suitable for retirees speculating on the date of their demise than for a city that believes in its future.  Nevertheless, give the Mayor his due as a real estate salesman; news radio reports he snagged $61,000 per slot which must make even Donald Trump envious.  At that price, my financial analysis indicates that the daily price to use those spots must be more than $22 per day for the new investors to break even.  And, all is not lost to the city--presumably the new owners will be forking over parking and real estate taxes when they take over.

In fact, if the Mayor had devoted the entire “windfall” to paying off debt or creating capital projects that would eventually produce revenues, one might think Daley  shrewd.  By using the money to fund ex-offender programs and school operations however, many conservative observers think the son is squandering the father’s legacy. 

I disagree.  I think a much more audacious plan is congealing in the mind that seized the Lincoln Park Gun Club and hijacked Meigs Field.  Consider this: earlier in the week the Mayor also announced that he planned to place more of those flashing blue light cameras on the streets of Chicago.  Crowing about the superior technology the city will use, the Mayor effused the benefits of watching everything that happens in Chicago.  He told us that our cameras would be technically superior to the system in Washington D.C. and more intrusive than the network in London .  

The ostensible justification for these devices is to control crime by watching street level activity.  Right now, these cameras can be found in high-crime areas, mounted high and away from vandals.  They announce their existence with an obnoxious, flashing blue light suggesting that airborne police cars are ready to descend on miscreants like a flight of Valkyries.  

The Mayor also announced another feature of the new cameras for which we should all be proud.    Chicago ’s new models will not be so obnoxious because they will not have the flashing blue light feature. 

Really? 

It seems to me that the cops would want crooks to know that the cameras are there.  Crooks are dumb and need to be reminded that they are on candid camera to prevent robberies and murders before they happen--stopping crime is a much better result better than producing a grainy video record for some far-distant trial.  By removing the flashing, blue light from the new cameras they change from active crime control tools to devices that simply watch.  Nixing the light diminishes their effectiveness as a front-line, crime-stopper so there must be some other benefit for installing them. 

That reason might be found in London and it shows how the Mayor’s 99-year lease of the garages makes sense.  To reduce traffic in their city, the authorities have established a daily fee for the “privilege” of driving a car into central London.  The charge is about $14 dollars per day for those who want to enter the most congested areas.  Collecting the tax could be an administrative nightmare but the crafty Londoners have come up with an efficient and effective method to enforce the tax.  Using the network of “crime control” cameras, they take a picture of your license plate and send you a bill.  Given the trips the Mayor makes overseas, he cannot have helped but notice this clever revenue-enhancer. 

When the Mayor adopts this plan, Chicago will collect a transaction fee from every car that comes into the downtown area.  That means businessmen meeting their lawyers, minivans full of children going to The American Girl’s Store and even taxicabs will pay the city a daily fee.  The Mayor’s cameras will capture the license plate image of each and every vehicle that passes and send a bill to the registered owner.  Even at a nominal fee of $5, this will produce far more revenue than collecting parking fees from far fewer drivers who use the garages the city will no longer operate. 

In this context, the mayor’s lease of the garages looks inspired.  Anticipating that the market for daily parking spaces will diminish when the city begins an access tax, he jettisons these already underused properties to some out-of-town rubes before the plan becomes public. 

Then, he can announce the new driving tax and, at the same time, tell his voters that he’s reducing their property taxes.  As always, he’ll be able to count on the media missing the fact that the property tax reduction is far smaller than the new revenues and that the benefit isn’t permanent.

A substantial bonus will be the fact that most victims of the tax will be suburbanites!  Finally, the city will find a way to directly tax people who do business in Chicago but do not live there.  If he’s really clever he can cut a deal with the politicians in the suburbs to report his “catches” so the suburban cops can check on stickers.  

This plan would accrue another bonus close to the mayor’s heart; by taking steps to ban the evil automobile, he would endear himself to the Olympic selection committees here and internationally.   Just like London did a couple of years ago.  

Rich Daley’s been the mayor for a long time and, so far, he’s avoided a “jump the shark” moment.  I once thought the political burglary of the Lincoln Park Gun Club or of Meigs Field should have provided that moment.  Later, one would think that the actual larceny of the hired truck scandal would have served equally as well.  That they did not demonstrates how much Chicago Democrats will tolerate to avoid another Harold Washington-type reformer.  Perhaps they will put their foot down if Hizzoner adopts another quaint English custom and renames the city “ Chicago on Michigan .”

© 2006 Ralf Seiffe

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.

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