$300 parking permit OKd for realty agents, others

November 16, 2006
BY FRAN SPIELMAN

City Hall Reporter Chicago aldermen held their noses Wednesday and expanded a residential permit parking program that has spread like wildfire -- creating a $300-a-year parking permit for real estate agents, social workers and home health care providers.

Mayor Daley tried to satisfy critics by limiting the hours of the new permit -- from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., instead of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. as originally planned. He even delayed the effective date until March 1 and included a one-year sunset.

But the changes were not enough to satisfy a parade of aldermen who say Chicago "created a monster" when it established residential permit parking 27 years ago -- and that the new permit will make it worse.

The 44-4 vote came only after Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th) informed aldermen they had no choice. If they failed to approve the new permit, it would blow a $2.4 million hole in Daley's 2007 budget.

"I don't want to institute an elitist system that gives real estate brokers or any other business people [who] make lots of money [the right] to park anywhere. I don't want anybody having their windows broken -- because that's what's going to happen with their fancy cars being parked in my ward," said Ald. George Cardenas (12th).

Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) said it's time a parking-starved city that has become addicted to residential permit parking go cold turkey.

Daley tried to reduce the number of residential permit parking zones in 1998, only to back off after a City Council rebellion. That's why he had little sympathy for the aldermanic complaints.

"Residential permit parking came in through the aldermen -- not through the executive branch. We had nothing to do with this," the mayor said. Over the years, residential permit parking has become the catchall solution to Chicago's parking crunch.

From June 2005 until May 2006, the city issued 101,713 permits. The annual fee is $25.
The zones got their start in 1979 on the streets surrounding Northeastern Illinois University. There are now 1,302 residential permit parking zones in the city.

© Copyright 2006 Sun-Times News Group