City Council Members, Park Conservancies and Advocates Demand More Funds for NYC Parks

On a frigid morning last week on the steps of City Hall in New York City, advocates for increasing city funds to the Parks Department demanded $95 million to hire 1,000 additional workers in response to the mayor’s preliminary budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.

“Parks are power, parks are key,” chanted the crowd led by Daniel Abram, the director of policy and programs at New Yorkers for Parks.

The rally was organized by the Play Fair Coalition, an advocacy group with over 400 member organizations that works to increase the city’s allocation for the Parks Department to 1 percent of the total budget. This is a policy that Mayor Eric Adams himself supported during his 2021 campaign. 

Last July, the Parks Department was allocated around 0.55 percent of the total city budget, receiving $20 million less than the preceding year, The City reported. These cuts came despite a total city budget for the current fiscal year of $112.43 billion, an increase of $5 billion from the previous fiscal year. In November, when the city came into around $200 million of additional tax revenue, only around $2 million went to the Parks Department for the acquisition of new trash receptacles. Though some money was added to the Parks budget through federal grants, no city funds went towards expanding the department’s workforce. 

“Parks are essential to the health and well being of every New Yorker,” said Abram. “Yet for two years, the Parks Department has faced targeted staffing cuts and hiring freezes, and the impact is clear: unsafe conditions, neglected spaces and workers stretched too thin to meet the needs of the communities they serve.”

The mayor’s preliminary budget for next fiscal year, which begins July 1, adds an extra cleaning shift at 64 different parks, and details a plan to invest $170 billion over the course of the next decade to improve infrastructure across the city, including on park land. It also adds funds for the Swim for Life program, which teaches children to swim, and the Schoolyards to Playgrounds program, which opens up school yards to the public during non-school hours. Some of these funds are also added to this year’s budget for the remaining year.

Under Adams’ proposed budget, spending for the Parks Department would increase to $570.164 million next fiscal year, though that includes only city funds and not federal grants. This is around an $8 million increase from this year’s budget. However, at around 0.5 percent of the total city budget, it’s a proportional decrease in comparison to the original adopted budget of the last fiscal year.

For the attendees of this rally, many of whom are city council members or local environmental advocates, this is not enough. 

As Inside Climate News reported last summer, the city’s Parks Department suffers from historic disinvestment which has led to many issues with invasive species, understaffing and increased vulnerability to climate-induced extreme weather events. The workforce that remains is often worried that their jobs will be on the line when the next fiscal year rolls around. 

This year, the chronic underfunding of the department was felt strongly in the city’s wetlands, marshes and forests, which account for a third of city park land. Last year’s budget cut 51 positions from the workforce that looks after these areas, limiting the effectiveness of their remaining coworkers.

According to the Parks Department, some employees were switched over to seasonal grant-funded jobs and others moved to full-time roles, but many simply left the department when funding ran out.  

“Our forests have 5 million of New York City’s 7 million trees, and we have a bare-bones staff to care for them,” said Emily Walker, the senior manager for external affairs at the Natural Areas Conservancy, a nonprofit that helps New Yorkers connect with nature.

Parks advocates are also concerned about public safety in local parks. Adam Ganser, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, said there are only 260 on-site park enforcement patrol officers to cover 30,000 acres of park land. These officers enforce rules and regulations in city parks, and are currently able to cover only around 9 percent of parks for 30 minutes a day. 

“The Parks Department has not been restored,” said Ganser. “There are critical programs that are not funded. There are staffing lines that are going to expire at the end of the year.”

Staff like urban park rangers, who lead recreational activities and manage local wildlife, often face job uncertainty as many of their roles are seasonal, causing them to fear their contracts may not be renewed at the end of the year. According to the Parks Department, 36 percent of its positions are seasonal roles. 

Parks are integral to the city’s resilience to climate change—cooling down neighborhoods with tree canopies, sequestering stormwater in park soil and absorbing carbon. But they are also vulnerable to the consequences of the warming climate, such as fires and floods. In November 2024, multiple brush fires burned in parks during the city’s first drought watch in two decades.

“Back in November, when some of our parks were literally burning to the ground, the administration had a chance to give us a couple more dimes and nickels for the Parks Department,” said Justin Brannan, a city council member for Brooklyn. “They gave us nothing, nothing. We’re talking about years and years of cavalier disinvestment in our parks that adds up.”

The most vulnerable parks are often the smaller ones in less wealthy neighborhoods because they do not have a robust conservancy or volunteer network, unlike Brooklyn’s Prospect Park or Manhattan’s Central Park. But even those parks suffer due to understaffing and underfunding in the Parks Department. 

“For over 40 years, parks conservancies, ‘friends of’ groups and other open space organizations have worked alongside NYC Parks to steward many of the city’s green spaces,” said Morgan Monaco, the president of the Prospect Park Alliance. “However, most of our organizations rely 100 percent on the city for trash management and facilities maintenance, underlying the need for adequate and stable public funding to ensure our parks thrive.”

Ultimately, the Play Fair Coalition is asking for the Parks Department to be prioritized in next fiscal year’s budget. For that to happen, they say, the department will need $95 million to fund 1,000 positions across the department in order to rectify the issue of low staff numbers. Many City Council members support the demands, which may move the mayor during budget negotiations. 

“I’m telling you now, as we head into the… budget negotiations, this City Council is making parks funding one of our top priorities,” said Brannan. “We’re going to fight like hell to get this done because it’s the right thing to do.”