You Gotta Have $1.3B for Parks
The good news: The city is planning 400 parks-related projects across the five boroughs. The bad news, according to a story in today’s Post: Of the $1.3 billion the city plans to borrow in coming years for Parks Dept.-related initiatives ($273 million of that earmarked for Brooklyn), a sizable chunk will go to repairing and…
The good news: The city is planning 400 parks-related projects across the five boroughs. The bad news, according to a story in today’s Post: Of the $1.3 billion the city plans to borrow in coming years for Parks Dept.-related initiatives ($273 million of that earmarked for Brooklyn), a sizable chunk will go to repairing and reviving neglected parks. According to critics, the city has let parks go to seed rather than regularly maintaining them with money from the general budget. (The Post-produced vid above shows all manner of nasty in some parks.) The trend has been to turn around and borrow from the capital budget to mend broken parks, which critics say costs tax payers millions more in the long run. “It’s astonishing that the city’s elected officials continue to put the public in harms way by allocating a fraction of the expense dollars needed. It simply isn’t a priority,” said Geoffrey Croft, president of New York City Park Advocates. The other fear parks watchdogs have is that some capital projects will be shelved when Mayor Bloomberg leaves office. The biggest project currently planned for Brooklyn is the $50 million rebuilding of McCarren Park Pool.
City’s Park ‘Row’ [NY Post]
What I wanna know is.. Which park can I go to for a quick $20 blowie in the bushes?
The city is stupid for neglecting their parks. if they want to make the city more appealing for people they should maintain the parks continuously. Why do all the parks need to be improved all the time. Some of them would be very nice if maintained. I guess as said above, the city doesn’t care about the appearance of the city’s parks and other green areas. They don’t need to waste capital budget money all the time. Also the city would be much more appealing to people just like the suburbs are and other big cities.
The lack of maintenance funding doesn’t make sense. For a small amount of funding there is tremendous bang for the buck.
Parks makes neighboorhoods feel better, are really nice if you have kids, are great for improving the health of new yorkers by excercise and activity and bring a good vibe.
Owls Head Park is really a nice park and people should visit it at least once. There’s plenty of parking and there are some nice hills and scenary from the top of the park.
If you notice, most of the parks are in less affluent areas. Councilmen and women are too busy earmarking funds so they can get a kickbacks. The money is there; its being stolen.
So interesting that there has not been a single post from any of the people who typically yell and scream about the funding plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park here. Could it be that they’ve finally realized that their “plan” for BBP would just lead to a park that will slowly fall into disrepair that will eventually become an eyesore?
Having dealt with Parks over the renovation of the dilapidated dog run in Owls Head Park, two things are clear. One, Parks’ budget is so ridiculously thin that it can only afford to do cursory maintenance. The second is pretty much what the guy said on the video piece: unless you get the neighborhood and private donors actively involved in maintaining the local park it’s pretty much in limbo.
$1.2 millon was spent building the Millenium Skate Park at Owl’s Head, which pissed off a lot of dog runners because our fences are literally falling down and there are weeds tall enough to swallow a mastif. I don’t think a Parks employee has set foot in the dog run in five years.
But here’s the thing: the skate park was built with private money, some of it allegedly from a pile of cash that Paul Simon gave to Parks. The pols are the ones who release these funds to special projects so they share in the blame as well. More people use the dog run than the skateboard park so how come they can’t find 50 grand in those Parks earmarks to replace the existing shoddy snow fence with something permanent like that at the skate park?
The park haters from Cobble Hill and Willowtown should see this. This is why the new Brooklyn Bridge Park needs to have its own dedicated income stream. The city doesn’t give a shit about parks, never has. It is a miracle they agreeed to a new park along the waterfront. And there are nincompoops out there whining that its not a real park. Really unbelievable.
Which is exactly why the folks at Brooklyn Bridge Park are correct on insisting on having an independent revenue stream to fund their operations budget. Otherwise they’d be in this horrible situation as well where maintenance gets delayed until problems reach emergency levels, and then are can be funded by either the City or State’s capital budgets. Whatever your problem may be with private development in or near a public park, it’s certainly better than the alternative outlined here of parks rotting away for lack of operating budget.