Parking is crazy in the South Loop. It's crazy everywhere. A West Loop friend just told me she is sick of the employees of the Social Security Administration who aren't disabled using disabled window tags in their cars around the headquarters. When I suggested they may be actual disabled people visiting SSA for some legitimate reason, she said she sees them parking at nine, leaving at 5, carrying children from the building's daycare center and having a healthy spring in their step. Another woman stopped me at the Dearborn Station on the same day to tell me she sees people with handicapped window tags parking in Printers Row and then running briskly to catch buses to go into the Loop. (To give them the benefit of the doubt, I figure if they were healthy, they could walk downtown, right?)

I stopped at Alderman Fioretti's service office on Dearborn and Congress on my way to City Hall because he told me his office might sell the stickers; he wasn't sure. They don't. But a member of his staff said she thought City Clerk Miquel del Valle was going to be there on July 6--for one day only--to sell city stickers and zoned parking permits. Without knowing whether or not there is a 15-day grace period after June 30 on the little stickers like there is on city stickers, I didn't want to wait. She wasn't sure either--and I didn't want to find out the hard way.

Besides I kind of wanted to go to City Hall to see if the city clerk himself would be greeting us suckers like he was last year, directing traffic like any old patronage worker. He does that. He's quite a joker. As a matter of fact, I was at the Independent Voters of Illinois roast of him last Friday night at the Parthenon, where he mentioned that when he saw the invitation (which included his head shot consumed with flames. Roast. Get it?) he really thought he was in hell.

But he wasn't there on Monday. And I was disappointed. Below is a story I wrote a year ago about him hovering around the office interfacing with the public, which never appeared anywhere. So I will share it here.

by Bonnie McGrath (June, 2009)

A young guy in a tank top is yelling at the elderly gentleman in the pastel pink broadcloth shirt at the door of the big bustling city hall room that sells vehicle stickers. The young guy is holding an application in one hand; the older man is directing foot traffic into the room, depending on what you need. A city sticker? A residential parking pass? Something else? He sends you to one line or another.

“You’re selling over a million, hundred-thousand stickers and making all that money, and the roads still look like crap,” says the young guy. The older gentleman leans in to listen and then leans back and shrugs. He starts to say something, leans in again, and then seems to give up, gently pushing the young guy into the room so he can transact his business.

Instead, the young guy walks off mad. “It just really gets me that they take in all this money--and for what? They don’t spend it on anything worthwhile.”

And then I realize something: The young guy hasn’t been talking to a lowly patronage worker charged with directing the massive crowd of Chicagoans needing to buy stickers into the proper queue. He has been talking to the city clerk himself, Miguel del Valle, the second highest elected official in Chicago. The city clerk is the one directing the crowd into the room.

I ask the young guy if he realizes who he is talking to. He says he does. But he says he’s totally unimpressed.

It’s like you’re complaining to the mayor, I tell him. “Oh, Daley would never do this, he’d never stand around listening to people like this.” And then the young guy walks away, still upset that the sticker revenue is being wasted.

And I am then at the front of the mass that is waiting to face del Valle, awaiting directions.

“You’re the actual clerk, aren’t you,” I ask, because I still can’t believe my eyes, that it’s really him doing this lowly job. “I guess you really have laid off a lot of people here at city hall!”

The city clerk doesn’t pay much attention to what I’m saying. “What are you here for today?” he asks me. I tell him I need some daily parking passes. And then I tell him, “This is very admirable, what you’re doing, coming down to face the people.”

He puts one of his hands on my back, and with the other he points to the line I should get into. Then he gives me a little push and I am very well propelled in the direction that I should be going. And he goes on to face the next person in line.

And so it goes. I keep my eye on him at the door during my whole time in the second line, until I get my stickers and walk past him on the way out. He is steadfastly there for the constituents, chatting up to one degree or another anyone who wants to. But if you don’t want to talk, if you just want to make your purchase and leave, he is very efficient at telling you where to go.

So what gives?

“He’s there every day, eight hours a day, May through July,” says his spokesperson Kristine Williams. “He comes in early, and shuts down at night during the sticker season. Our office is the most visited in City Hall and he likes to find out what’s on people’s minds and get feedback.”

But what if he has meetings, phone calls, every day administrative business? Doesn’t he have better things to do? And who stands in for him when he goes to lunch?

“He really never leaves,” says Williams. “He just eats a power bar at lunch.”

So the second highest elected official in the city has no other business to transact?“

If there is a meeting or a phone call that he absolutely can’t miss, he’ll make a rare exception,” Williams explains, “but that rarely happens and he does it fast; he doesn’t make too many exceptions during sticker season, and when he does he has a member of his staff go out there.“

He likes to hear feedback from the constituents. He wants to hear and see the people and he wants them to see who he is as a person.”

So what kinds of things does he hear from the people?

“Well, like today, he heard from a woman who lives on the south side and she told him that there needs to be more opportunities to buy stickers on the south side. You see what I mean? He gets a lot of ideas. All the time.”

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By Paul from Wrigley-Trump
Posted: 06/30/2010 7:50 AM

I like the term you coined for parking. Parkage sounds so much classier, especially since it's not free any more.