Legality
Parking meters have been challenged in court many times, but are considered legal if the parking meters used for purposes of parking regulation and not for revenue purposes. In an 1937 case in Oklahoma [6], D.E. Duncan contended that the ordinances impose a fee for the free use of the streets, which is a right of all citizens of the state. The Courts ruled that free use of the streets is not an absolute right, but agreed with an unpublished 1936 Florida court decision that said, “If it had been shown that the streets on which parking meters have been installed under this ordinance are not streets where the traffic is sufficiently heavy to require any parking regulations of this sort, or that the city was making inordinate and unjustified profits by means of the parking meters, and was resorting to their use not for regulatory purposes but for revenue only, there might have been a different judgment.”
The Supreme Court of North Carolina judged that a city could not pledge on-street parking meter fee proceeds as security for bonds issued to build off-street parking decks. The court said, “Streets of a municipality are provided for public use. A city board has no valid authority to rent, lease or let a parking space on the streets to an individual motorist ‘for a fee’ or to charge a rate or toll therefor. Much less may it lease or let the whole system of on-street parking meters for operation by a private corporation or individual.” [7]
In an apparent contradiction, Chicago agreed in December 2008 to privatize their 36,000 parking meters for $1.15 billion in revenue. A partnership between Morgan Stanley and LAZ Parking will purchase the 75-year lease on the parking meters and revenue collection. The recent agreement has not yet been challenged in court. [8] The Chicago parking meter privitization deal has resulted in meter boycotts, vandalism, and political problems for the Daley administration as hourly rates have been increased. [9]
The very first parking meter ticket resulted in the first court challenge to metered parking enforcement. Rev. C.H. North of Oklahoma’s City’s Third Pentecostal Holiness Church had his citation dismissed when he claimed he had gone to a grocery store to get change for the meter. [10]
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I haven’t looked at the Oakland Charter but I wonder if its legal to raise the parking meter rates in our “fair” city.

Frank Zamacona
Oakland, resident