$50M Going Back to Parking Reserves: Daley

Nearly $50 million is headed back to the much-depleted reserve fund established with the privatization of Chicago's parking meters, Mayor Richard Daley announced Thursday.

Another $45 million, a larger amount than previously estimated, will be carried over into the 2011 budget.

Still $16 million worth of additional savings was realized from October through December "thanks to our continued hiring freeze, reductions in our health care expenses and cuts in other non-personnel expenditures," said Daley.

The mayor also said that overtime expenses continued their downward trend.  Overtime paid in 2010 was $23 million less than 2009 and $36 million than 2008, he said.

"If the positive revenue trends continue, along with other expense reductions -- you have to continue those -- in additional savings realized this year, the city may need to borrow even less [from the] reserves at the end of 2011 than the $120 [million] we had predicted," he said from his fifth floor City Hall press conference room.

The $6.15 billion budget for 2011, laid out last October, proposed using one-time revenues such as the parking meter fund, to temporarily shore up the city's $655 million gap.

The city's parking meters were privatized in a 75-year, $1.15 billion deal in December 2008.

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