Meter’s Up for PARKatlanta

This morning, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed announced that the City of Atlanta would not renew its contract with PARKatlanta, the oft-maligned – for good reason – organization that has controlled parking enforcement in Atlanta for the past seven years. Reed also announced that the contract for Atlanta’s parking enforcement will be put out to bid within the next thirty days, clarifying that Atlanta has no intent to resume enforcement in-house.

Back in February, I wrote about SR 809, Senator Vincent Fort’s attempt to respond to the City of Atlanta’s monumental mistake of contracting with PARKatlanta by usurping local control. From the Wayback Machine:

[Fort] explained that because elected officials are directly accountable to voters, the government should handle its own parking enforcement. But that statement assumes that elected officials aren’t accountable to their constituents when a private company they contract with, whether it’s for garbage pickup or to run their city, completely FUBARs their one job, as PARKatlanta did with parking enforcement.

The City of Atlanta’s elected leaders did a solid job of making it clear that they were not happy with PARKatlanta, and several at that time, including Mayor Kasim Reed, indicated that they had no intention to renew the contract – which is what was announced today. This is a win for local control, and it is a huge victory for Atlanta’s residents, visitors, and anyone else who has endured the PARKatlanta reign of terror.