No wonder Mayor Daley is so touchy about the subject of mortgaging Chicago's future.

He has now unloaded four of the city's most valuable assets for a $6 billion mountain of cash and saddled taxpayers with $5.8 billion worth of long-term debt.

The great Chicago sell-off started with the Skyway ($1.83 billion), continued with downtown parking garages ($563 million) and Midway Airport ($2.5 billion) and culminated this week with the sale of Chicago parking meters ($1.15 billion).

More troubling for future generations is the fact that the mayor plans to spend at least $425 million of the parking meter windfall over the next five years -- and $324 million more if the moribund economy is slow to bounce back.

Daley has  also increased the city's long-term debt by a whopping 178 percent over the last decade -- from $2.1 billion to $5.8 billion or $2,006 per person.

And Chicago has more than 150 tax increment financing districts that siphoned $555.3 million away in 2007.

The bottom line is that Daley's successor will be boxed in by heavy debt, a diminishing tax base and precious few money-making assets.

"He's handcuffing future mayors. Whoever comes in is going to find an empty cupboard," said a longtime observer, who asked to remain anonymous.

Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd), one of five aldermen to vote against the parking meter lease, argued that taxpayers would have made as much as $4 billion by raising rates and keeping the meters.

"You have five years of mid-term budget relief. But what happens after that? We're losing a great revenue stream for the next 70 years," he said.

Daley is not concerned about the future -- not when he has a mountain of cash to keep building while other cities are cutting back.

"The aldermen should respond [by building] a new school, a new library, water, sewers, senior centers, affordable housing now -- not in 50 years. The people own the asset to be used today . . . not for 2050," the mayor said.

Civic Federation President Laurence Msall is all for the sale of "non-core" city assets. But only if proceeds are used to cut the city's operating budget, retire debt and improve the condition of shaky employee pension funds.

"These are one-time revenue sources that the city is using, in some cases, to prop up its operating budget. They're not gonna be available once they're spent for any future administration or future crisis," he said.

Interest from a $400 million long-term reserve will replace the $20 million in annual parking meter revenues. But, the private operator gets the growth, through steep rate hikes the City Council was "afraid" to impose when the meters belonged to the city.