Our Parks Department's staffing levels have experienced a five-year decline, with this year being the lowest second only to drastic cuts in FY21, at the
Our Parks Department’s staffing levels have experienced a five-year decline, with this year being the lowest second only to drastic cuts in FY21, at the pandemic’s onset. The $25 million budget cuts
However, reality tells a bleaker story. The agency is funded and managed with the same strategies it employed when the city neared bankruptcy in the 1970s. During this time, funding for parks wasand never fully recovered. Before the economic downturn, the City would allocate 1.4% of its budget to Parks funding, supporting a workforce of 11,000 employees to effectively operate and maintain its robust green infrastructure, engage with communities and keep parks safe.
This is fundamentally an equity issue. For far too long, New York’s low-income communities, disproportionately represented by racial and ethnic minority groups, have borne the brunt of the City’s neglect. While a handful of communities have benefited greatly from conservancies that fund, support and care for specific parks, these few organizations do not represent a scalable model for the city’s 1,700+ parks. Nor should they.
Adequately funding our city’s parks system is entirely feasible, and well within the Mayor’s power to address. While Mayor Adams holds the Parks system hostage by tying its funding to the, we can’t lose sight of the small financial scale here. Parks funding is dwarfed by other major city agencies, and represents a tiny fraction of the city’s overall budget – currently proposed to be just $583 million out of a total $110 billion – essentially lint in the administration’s pocket.
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