00:00For almost two decades, Chicago has been stewing over a $1.15 billion deal to lease 36,000 parking
00:06meters to an investor group led by Morgan Stanley. The city now has an opportunity to do something
00:12about it. Bloomberg's Trudy Singh has been reporting on the story and she joins us now.
00:16And Trudy, this is a relic of the global financial crisis when Chicago needed to raise money
00:20quickly. What is happening right now that has allowed this issue to come up again? Because it
00:26was a 75-year lease, if I remember correctly. Yes, yes, exactly. In 2008, the city signed a 75-year
00:33lease with an investor group that was going to take charge of about 36,000 parking meters.
00:38Now, right now, the vote in front of city council earlier this week was for Morgan Stanley-led group
00:44to sell that asset to a new owner. Now, the city council was really supposed to, the finance
00:49committee was supposed to just vote on the transfer. But given concerns that members of the city council
00:56have about just the overall finances of the city and what the city may have lost during the course
01:02of the last two decades in terms of revenue from the parking meters, this has been something that
01:06has come up and they've been really debating about this. And then now, given the transfer,
01:11new questions have come up in terms of what the city's stake potentially could be in the future.
01:17So what do city council members want? What are they pushing for?
01:20Yeah. So one of the things that a few city council members are pushing for is potentially a stake or
01:27some sort of a change in the amount of revenue that the city might be able to get from the
01:33parking
01:33meters. Now, the city council isn't really in the negotiations between two private entities that are
01:40looking to buy and sell this particular asset, but they want to be part of the discussions.
01:45Okay. So they're trying to insert themselves into the process. Why is this so important for Chicago?
01:51Well, just like in 2008, the city currently also is facing a financial challenge. In 2026,
01:58the city is trying to close a roughly $1.2 billion deficit. Now, this parking meter deal doesn't
02:04directly connect to that deficit for this year, but the city in general is constantly looking for
02:10revenue because it has a long-term structural deficit.
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