City Hall, NY – Ahead of the City Council’s Executive Budget hearing jointly held by the Committee on Parks and Recreation and the Committee on Finance on Tuesday at 12 PM, the Council identified remaining gaps in funding for city parks within the Mayor’s Fiscal Year 2026 Executive Budget that leave key services unfunded. While funding was added to the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) for its Urban Park Rangers, Tree Stump Removal, and Green Thumb Program to partially address what the Council outlined in its Preliminary Budget Response, key program investments remain missing. These omissions include Council funding priorities to hire adequate Parks Department staff, keep up with tree pruning maintenance, and maintain clean and safe parks. The Council’s budget response identified $65.7 million to invest in Parks programming and services, and the Mayor’s Executive Budget only included $11.7 million for these.
The Parks Department manages more than 30,000 acres of land, or 14 percent of all of New York City. This includes almost 1,000 playgrounds, 800 athletic fields, as well as hundreds of other recreational and athletic facilities. It is estimated that the City’s parks receive over 100 million visits annually, greater than the combined number of visitors to Paris, London, and Berlin last year. Yet compared to other major US cities, New York City allocates much less to Parks in terms of its percentage of the city budget.
The following programs were outlined in the Council’s Preliminary Budget Response, but were left out of the Mayor’s FY26 Executive Budget.
Clean, Green, and Safe Parks
The Council has proposed the baselining of an additional $32.5 million starting in Fiscal 2026. These funds would allow the Department to hire an additional 100 City Park Workers, 50 Gardeners, 50 Associate Park Service Workers, 80 Parks Enforcement Patrol Officers, 85 Climber and Pruners, 31 Capital Project Managers, 35 Community Associates, and 35 Administrative Staff Analysts.
Parks Department Hiring Policy Relief
The citywide two-for-one hiring freeze, initiated over a year ago, restricts hiring, allowing agencies to only fill one of every two vacant positions. For most agencies, this has caused issues related to service provision. The Parks Department, while also subject to the hiring freeze, has an additional issue that has hampered its ability to fill positions in the agency. As a result of recent PEGs, in which the Parks Department provided savings based on attrition and vacancy reductions, the Department currently has an actual headcount that nearly exceeds its budgeted headcount. Therefore, the Department has very few existing vacancies. As a result, the Parks Department is not able to hire under the two-for-one hiring freeze policy and is unable to maintain and clean parks and meet other key goals. The Council calls on the Administration to eliminate the Department’s hiring freeze and allow the agency to fully hire for their true headcount needs.
Tree Pruning and Maintenance
In order for the Department of Parks and Recreation to better manage the City’s trees, the Administration should provide an additional $2.5 million for the tree maintenance and pruning budget, an approximately 25 percent increase in resources. In recent fiscal years, the Department has failed to meet its annual target of 65,000 street trees pruned; in Fiscal 2023, there were 46,097 street trees pruned while in Fiscal 2024, they pruned 54,448 street trees. To increase the maintenance of the City’s trees, the Council calls on the Administration to increase the amount of funding allocated to forestry and horticulture by $2.5 million.
Council Funded Initiatives
The Council’s funding initiatives address service gaps across the city, including $5.4 million for the Parks Equity Initiative to support both community programming in smaller neighborhood parks as well as the work of park and garden volunteer groups. It is critical that this funding, left out of the Mayor’s Executive Budget, is included in the final budget through a continued full commitment towards Council discretionary funding.
“Mayor Adams campaigned on increasing the parks budget, but while in office, he has repeatedly slashed parks jobs and programs, leaving workers scrambling to make ends meet, said Council Member Shekar Krishnan. “Parks are a lifeline for our city, helping our physical and mental health, building strong communities, and protecting New Yorkers from climate-fueled emergencies. Parks workers keep our parks clean, green, and safe. I’m proud of the bold vision Speaker Adams, our City Council and I have put forward for fully funded parks and green spaces. We owe it to our city to invest in our parks.”
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