Parking a car in Chicago is going to get even more expensive with Mayor Daley's plan to privatize the city's 36,000 parking meters. Under the plan, meter rates would increase to $1 an hour. By 2013, drivers will pay $6.50 an hour to park at downtown meters.

When the City Council Finance Committee met last week to debate the plan, aldermen complained about everything from soaring rates to end of parking-meter holidays, "to allowing the private operator to write parking tickets as frequently as every two hours at two-hour meters," the Chicago Tribune reported. Ald. Danny Solis (25^th) said: "I could see people having to carry big bags of quarters - big bags of money - to deal with" these rate hikes.

Under the plan, Chicago pockets $1.2 billion to allow the partnership of Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and LAZ Parking to lease and manage the city's meter operations for 75 years. By leasing the meters, Chicago sought to fill a $150 million budget hole. The city's Chief Financial Officer Paul Volpe, said there were two choices:"cutting $150 million in expenses or raising $150 million worth of taxes."