Parking union: We were lied to

The partners who want to lease Harrisburg's parking garages made a forceful case in a three-and-a-half-hour meeting with the City Council last night, but the immediate decision makers were not sitting in front of them.

Those decision makers are the members of the Harrisburg Parking Authority union, which can block the $215 million deal under the terms of its contract. Union members occupied the left flank of the hearing room and reiterated their passionate opposition to the lease.

"The HPA employees feel like they've been lied to from the beginning of this whole thing," union leader Gail Lewis told the council.

Employees said they were promised repeatedly that they would remain employed by the authority, but the deal now on the table would put them on the payroll of the leasing partnership. Lewis also said Jacob A. Frydman, a leader of the leasing partnership, originally said he would not fight if the union decided against the deal.

In an interview, Frydman said he had learned something about why the union was so resistant to the lease.

"The HPA made promises to them that they can't live up to," Frydman said.

But, he said, that was not a good enough reason for the union to walk.

"I think that they would find if they sat with us we're honorable and we can find common ground," he said.

Frydman leads Harrisburg Public Parking, the partnership offering the lease deal.

The would-be parking tenants put on a full-court press in their presentation to council. They argued it was a good deal for Harrisburg financially. They pledged their commitment to protecting labor. They vowed to be a major corporate citizen. They even brought in a representative from a union in Chicago to endorse them. Chicago was the first city to lease its parking garages - Harrisburg would be the second.

"If we're making money, the city's making money," Frydman told the Council. He was talking about a specific clause of the proposed contract with the city, but it was also the theme of the evening.

Besides a $215 million upfront payment, the city would see an annual cash benefit of at least $12.2 million annually from the deal, Frydman said. That number combined expected revenues and savings on debt and capital spending.

The conclusion was based partly on Frydman's argument that HPA is reaping only $1.3 million annually, not the $4 million number he said was widely used. Lewis, who holds a financial position with the Harrisburg Parking Authority, cast doubt on those calculations in her remarks to Council.

Harrisburg Public Parking partner Sandy Cloud Jr. said the proposed parking operator, LAZ Parking of Hartford, Conn., has a history of community involvement. The company operates programs in Hartford to help people develop employment skills and support budding entrepreneurs, he said.

Cloud, a former chief executive officer of the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based anti-bigotry group National Conference for Community Justice, said the partnership also has a firm commitment to including minority businesses in its supply chain.

"You're going to get a new community partner," he said.

City Council President Linda Thompson raised the question of whether the parking authority could avoid a lease and boost its revenues by adopting some of the strategies proposed by the partners. Frydman said it could not.

Council members plan to hire an independent financial team to study the deal. They vowed yesterday to scrutinize the transaction carefully before making a decision.