New York City’s parks are a vital lifeline for busy and stressed New Yorkers. They act as the lungs in an otherwise compact and polluted city. During the pandemic, their importance was amplified as we all craved open space.
But now, our parks—all 1,700 of them—may see changes thanks to forthcoming budget cuts. Mayor Eric Adams this month ordered that city agencies (except for NYPD, Sanitation, and FDNY) take another 5% budget cut to help close a multibillion-dollar budget deficit thanks to pandemic aid drying up and migrant spending, according to Gothamist.
With that on top of cuts made earlier in the year (totaling about 12% in cuts), NYC Parks may endure a hiring freeze resulting in hundreds of jobs lost and key programs put to a halt.
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What does this mean for your local park if the cuts are realized?
They wouldn’t be as clean
Because the cuts mean a reduction of about 1,400 workers, clean-up services across the city would be drastically reduced, according to City Councilman and Parks Committee chairman Shekar Krishnan.
“Our parks now, instead of being cleaned seven days a week, will be cleaned one day a week,” he said during an oversight hearing this week. “The 17,000 trash cans in parks across our city will be overflowing.
“Given parks should be clean and safe and they contribute to public safety, why on earth would our Parks Department not be exempt from the cuts as you’ve exempted other agencies like NYPD and sanitation on the grounds of public safety and cleanliness?”
The agency also annually picks up more than 130,000 used hypodermic needles in our parks, according to parks advocate Adam Ganser in City Limits. Ganser is the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks.
So things might get ugly, even at beaches because they’re maintained by NYC Parks, too.
The Parks Department told Gothamist this week that it would do “everything [it] can” to keep them clean, even hiring about 400 “seasonal staff” to help with maintenance and operations.
“All existing POP [Parks Opportunity Program] participants will be retained through their 6-month terms, and full-time POP administrative staff will be transitioned to new roles,” they told the outlet. “Under this administration, we’ve made significant investments to improve our parks, and we remain committed to ensuring they remain clean, green, and safe.”
Parks will likely undergo more cuts next year under the mayor’s previously announced plans, however.
They would be more unkempt
In the same vein, without enough staff, parks wouldn’t be maintained as closely, meaning longer grass, lower-hanging branches, and bathrooms in even worse condition.
According to Ganser, continued cuts affecting repair and maintenance have ballooned capital repair costs. Parks are repeatedly flooded because of poorly maintained infrastructure at a time when parks should serve as climate mitigation.
There would be fewer or delayed swimming programs
Already this past summer, Parks Commissioner Sue Donahue had to eliminate its unfilled positions—lifeguards and tree pruners—cuts that were required as part of Adams’ Program to Eliminate the Gap, which calls for 4% operating cost cuts across all city agencies, according to NY1.
With more cuts and staffing shortages, it’s likely pool openings would be delayed again, too. Lifeguards were already difficult to find last summer and with less funding to go around, we’ll likely see this problem continue.
There would be fewer composting services
The cuts have also come for compost collection sites at the city’s greenmarkets and the more than 100 jobs across all the participating organizations. Thanks to an anonymous donation to GrowNYC, however, this program will continue through June 2024, when the city’s annual budget is due, according to Gothamist. But that doesn’t save the rest of the composting organizations that collect at NYC’s parks: the LES Ecology Center, Earth Matter NY, Big Reuse, Snug Harbor Cultural Center and the New York, Brooklyn and Queens botanical gardens.
GrowNYC actually sends its collections to be processed by organizations that have relied on city funding, Gothamist says. So while GrowNYC is technically safe, the city’s composting services are still largely at risk.
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