Parking audit finds problems, not meters

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Outsourcing the District’s parking meter service cost taxpayers millions of dollars in lost revenue, and more than half of the city’s meters are missing, broken or defaced, according to an internal District of Columbia audit.

Council Member Carol Schwartz said the findings confirmed her suspicions, and she urged new Mayor Adrian Fenty to work on a plan to bring the parking meter functions back in-house.

“This contract is not adequately monitored,” Schwartz said. “The District could do a better job for less money.”

Among the discoveries of the D.C. auditor:

» Privatization cost 33 percent more than had the work been performed in-house.

» Thirty-five percent of the audited meters couldn’t be found or accounted for.

» The District lost about $3.8 million in revenue from meters removed from locations around federal agencies.

Council Member Jim Graham, chairman of the public works committee, said he was troubled by the audit’s findings. The duties were handed over to the private sector in the 1990s because the District couldn’t maintain the duties, Graham said.

He said the District is much more efficient than it was 10 years ago, and he would consider looking at reclaiming the parking meter program. “This is a different government,” he said. “This government could do it.”

D.C. Department of Transportation Acting Director Emeka Moneme said in a written response that he takes the findings of the audit seriously, but that it overstates the amount of revenue the city would have earned without privatization.

The audit looked at the city’s contract with Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services from 1999 to 2005 and found that privatization cost the city about $2.2 million more than it would have if District employees performed the job..

Although the District’s 16,500 parking meters generate valuable revenue, the auditor found that DDOT failed to maintain a usable inventory.

DDOT managers could not find 670 of the 1,906 meters that the auditors asked to sample.

Six meters had the same identification number and collected revenue, although the auditor couldn’t determine whether the money ever reached the District’s coffers.

ACS repeatedly failed to repair parking meters in time, but the District continued to issue tickets on the broken meters, undermining the credibility of the District and “unfairly shift[ing] the cost, impact and liability for poor contractor performance and inept contract administration ... to parking patrons,” the report said.

The audit also found that the District lost nearly $4 million in revenues after DDOT removed more than 2,000 parking meters from around federal buildings without obtaining an agreement with the federal agencies who asked for the meters’ removal.

The parking spaces were removed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Oklahoma City bombings. The agencies have cited national security concerns to avoid paying for the lost spaces, according to Moneme’s response.

smccabe@dcexaminer.com

Advertisement