u/BassMusicIsLife

It's essentially a tax for the city, by the way it's collected is weird.

Like you have to guess how much time you need to park there, and if you get it wrong, some guy getting paid by the city makes you pay much more money than you otherwise would have had you guessed correctly.

And like private businesses are competing with public parking too, that's another layer. So you can pay a private business to essentially avoid the tax the city was trying to collect.