Under Mayor Eric Adams’ latest budget cuts, New York City parks are set to lose more than 1,400 employees, resulting in green areas being cleaned as infrequently as once a week in some cases.
Advocates predicted that the impact would make the 1,700 parks in the city unsafe and dirty, with deteriorating restrooms and a delayed opening of summer swimming pools.
During an hours-long public hearing on Monday, city council members presented a number of dire scenarios in an attempt to question the Adams administration about the drastic reductions in the city’s existing spending.
“To be sure, we face fiscal challenges,” said Shekar Krishnan, a Queens councilmember chairing the parks and recreation committee, as reported by Gothamist. “But to go after the essential services that our most vulnerable New Yorkers depend on is going to increase income inequality.”
The suffering caused by the cuts, according to some, is not being shared fairly. Despite the directive to reduce expenditure by 5% across all city agencies, the parks department was hit particularly hard: the city’s Human Resources Administration made the decision to end a workforce program that had supplied about 1,000 park employees in order to make savings – amounting to a de facto 12% reduction for parks (which account for less than 0.5 percent of the city’s budget, or approximately half a billion dollars).
Ganser issued a warning, saying that residents of New York should brace themselves for a replay of what transpired during the previous major financial cutback for parks—during the early stages of the epidemic in 2020-when New Yorkers found parks overflowing with trash.
Krishnan reports that the parks department will lose around $90 million in funds over the next two years.
In response to the council members’ objections during the session, Jacques Jiha, the budget director for Adams, reminded them that the city would need to close a $7 billion budget deficit by 2025.
The mayor may make midyear budget cuts through the November modification procedure in order to balance the city’s budget. The Council might decide to reject Adams’ November modifications, but doing so would put the funding of local departments in jeopardy in what is anticipated to be a spending proposal totaling approximately $111 billion.
