Privatizing parking in C.R. no simple matter

Local attorney Pete Leehey has had it with pigeons.

He's been firing off e-mails to City Hall and the city's parking operation for months to let people know he's fed up with dodging piles of pigeon feces and squashed pigeon carcasses in the city's Ground Transportation Center parking ramp.

“Somebody needs to explain why massive piles of pigeon feces cannot be cleaned up,” he said.

In the end, it's not clear who is to blame.

Fourteen months ago, the city turned over management of the city-owned parking ramps and lots, and on-street meters to a private management firm, Republic Parking System. Republic employs its own private-sector employees, and it manages some public employees, such as the city's meter technicians, maintenance workers and cashiers.

The city-owned downtown parking system is a small, slow-motion example of how government entities in Iowa and across the nation wrestle with the challenging cost of providing public services, especially with recent calls to cut government spending.

The City Council is preparing to take the final step next month in the gradual process of privatizing - you can call it outsourcing or subcontracting, too - a city parking operation that just three years ago had 29 public-sector jobs. Only six remain, said Conni Huber, the city's human resource director.

The plan is to turn over responsibility for the parking system to the non-profit Cedar Rapids Downtown District, which will employ Republic Parking System to run the day-to-day operations.

Positions held by city public employees will go away, replaced by private-sector employees with, by and large, lower wages and benefits.

Doug Neumann, president/CEO of the Downtown District, said the organization anticipates 22 private-sector employees and a number of part-time employees equal to five more full-time employees.

Wayne Clymer, president of Local 620 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said there is no need to do away with the unionized jobs. The union meter technicians and other union employees have been working under Republic Parking and have done a good job, Clymer said.

“The employees are experienced and well-trained, and they are familiar with the equipment and facilities,” he said.

The elimination of the city bargaining-unit jobs likely would have come 16 months ago when the city hired Republic, except for City Council member Justin Shields, a retired Quaker Co. employee and longtime local labor leader.

Shields is insisting now - and Mayor Ron Corbett agrees - that the remaining public parking employees be found other city jobs and that less-senior city employees not be laid off to make room for them.

“We're not in the business to run everything down to where employees have to survive on the lowest possible wages and benefits,” Shields said.

Neumann said the Downtown District's push to take over the parking operation comes from what he said is a widely shared sense that the parking system needs help. Who better to oversee the necessary improvements, Neumann asks - a City Council with hundreds of priorities or a Downtown District for which parking is among its top few priorities?

Even so, Neumann acknowledges that most employees will make less than they did as city employees. He added that the Downtown District expects Republic Parking to pay employees above the industry average and to provide health-care and other benefits.

“We would reject the notion that these are low-paid positions,” Neumann said. “I guess that's all subjective, and people can label them what they want.”

Neumann said the current city wage-and-benefit package pays parking meter technicians $47,375 a year, plus $26,575 in benefits. Neumann said under the Downtown District those jobs will pay $35,880, with $14,982 in benefits. Cashiers now earn $41,874, with $21,840 in benefits. As private-sector jobs, cashiers will earn $21,840, with $12,876 in benefits.

By Neumann's estimate, the Downtown District will spend $272,282 on six positions for which the city now pays $399,190 in wages and benefits.

Governor-elect Terry Branstad campaigned and won on promises of cutting state spending and reducing commercial property taxes. Such cuts in property taxes, which are the lifeblood of city, county and school district budgets, likely would put additional pressure on local government budgets and might spur more privatizing of work now done by public employees.

Rep. Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, new speaker of the Iowa House, said making government less costly and more efficient is part of what elected officials should try to do. Maybe that means privatizing in certain instances, he said.

“I think, in general terms, anytime you can interject free markets and a little bit of competition and make government operate more efficiently and earn the dollars they are getting, I think that makes for a better government on behalf of their citizens,” Paulsen said. “I think as we look at the services the state provides … (if) we can do it more efficiently using the private sector, that's what we should do.”

David Osterberg and Peter Fisher of the Iowa Policy Project, a non-profit liberal research group, say they currently are studying the differences in wages paid in the public and private sectors.

Fisher, the group's research director, said what troubles him is that privatizing a public service often is done for ideological reasons, based on a belief that the private sector is more efficient. He said that's not always true.

Osterberg, the group's executive director, said it might be great for a city government to cut jobs and farm some out to lower paying private companies, but in the end, it may mean less local income and so a lousier local economy.

Paying lower wages also might mean much worse service, he said.

The Downtown District's Neumann promises that attorney Leehey will sleep better at night once the district takes on oversight of the parking system, which may gain two public parking ramps in coming years. Complaints about pigeon filth will be addressed, Neumann said.

“Right now, the only authority the Downtown District has is to be the squeaky wheel,” he said. “We complain about that kind of stuff, too. We got electric-lit signs in the parking system that haven't worked for 10 years.”

Neumann said pointing fingers and assigning blame is too simplistic, though. In the end, the city is behind on maintenance of the system's infrastructure and best practices for pricing and equipment.

Leehey said he can't keep straight just who is responsible for what in the city's parking operation.

“Whoever is in charge now is doing a pathetic job,” he said. “So whichever is an alternative to what is happening now, I'm in favor of. If it's the city running it now, I'd sure like to see what privatization can do. If it's a private company calling the shots, it ain't working.”