The world might be unrecognizable in seventy-five years, but at least Chicagoans like me know who we’ll be paying for parking.

In 2008, our city entered into a seventy-five-year privatization contract with an investment conglomerate called Chicago Parking Meters llc (CPM) that includes Wall Street megabank Morgan Stanley, venture capital firm Alliance Capital Partners, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund.

As an immediate result, parking meter prices went through the roof, with rates quadrupling within a year of the deal being inked. They rose from an average of 50 cents per hour to $2 per hour in most neighborhoods — and today, many downtown spots go for $7 per hour. While Mayor Richard M. Daley claimed at the time that the agreement, which netted Chicago $1.15 billion, was necessary to shore up city finances, those funds were almost entirely spent within two years. By 2019, CPM had made back its entire investment, along with $500 million in profits. Chicago’s inspector general found that the city could have earned almost $1 billion more had it simply raised meter rates itself and put the revenue into bonds. Instead, each year until February 2084, every penny that Chicagoans pay to park their cars at meters will go to far-off corporate investment firms, with the city left in the lurch.