Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday said his administration would not seek to buy back Chicago's parking meters, after weighing an attempt to get out of what he called "the worst deal in the history of municipal finance."

Johnson confirmed Tuesday afternoon that his office had looked into the possibility of buying back the city's parking meters from Chicago Parking Meters LLC, the company that purchased them under former Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008, but determined the cost was too high.

"I want to put the rumors to bed. We are not pursuing a purchase of the city's parking meters at this time," Johnson said.

Daley convinced the City Council to swiftly sell a 75-year lease of city's parking meters in 2008 for $1.15 billion to help plug a city budget deficit. The company that bought the meters has already brought in nearly $2 billion in revenue from the deal, with 57 years still to go on the deal.

While the company that bought the parking meters is now looking to sell its lease, Johnson said it likely would have cost the city at least twice as much as the original $1.15 billion price tag for the parking meters.

"We had our teams run the numbers and look at every variation of a potential deal. However, the more we looked into it, the more problems emerged," Johnson said. "The final purchase price was far too high; much more than we initially received for the sale, and higher than most reasonable assumptions would support."

Johnson said the city would have had to take on a massive amount of debt to buy back the parking meters, and nearly 100% of any parking revenue collected by the city would have to go to paying off that debt for the next 40 years, and effectively force the city to raise parking rates every year to cover that cost.

The mayor also said the city would have faced the risk of parking habits changing significantly over the life of the contract, such as a rise in the number of self-driving cars or a dramatic increase in the use of public transit leading to a significant drop in parking revenue needed to pay off the cost of the contract.

"In short, this purchase would have made a bad deal even worse. The price is too high and requires debt service payments that extend too far and impose too much risk. Chicagoans would most likely end up footing the bill yet again for this original decision to privatize our parking," Johnson said.

While the company can still try to sell the parking meters to someone else, Johnson said the City Council would have to approve any such deal, giving the city leverage to try to negotiate better terms from any potential buyer.