Parks Department gets a 'fraction' of funding restored

About 600 positions in the Department of Parks and Recreations lost during the Adams administration have not been restored, leading to a degradation of the city’s open spaces, park advocates and union leaders say. 

Although the Parks Department’s $640.4 million Fiscal Year 2026 budget allocation is over $20 million more than last fiscal year’s, it’s not enough to recoup needed staff, advocates said. Lawmakers have said the funding bump would restore 174 positions. But the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, Adam Ganser, said that’s just a “fraction” of the staff that’s been lost over the last several years 

“The staffing lines that have been cut over the last three years have not been restored,” Ganser said Thursday.  “So I would say that the administration really dropped the ball again with Parks this year. The existing workers that are there are doing the best they can, and New Yorkers are going to feel the consequences of having not a fully staffed agency." 

Ganser said that the hiring freeze and budget cuts instituted by the Adams administration over successive years has led to Parks having 795 fewer positions across a number of different titles and divisions. A $2.5 million cut last year eliminated 51 positions in the Park’s Department’s Natural Resources Group, which manages around 10,000 acres of city parkland.  

Gardeners, foresters, wetland restorers and volunteer coordinators were let go from the department as a result. An unprecedented spate of brush fires erupted across the city’s parks later in the year, which workers, union leaders and open space advocates tied to a lack of maintenance caused by the budget cuts and a lack of oversight from the Parks Enforcement Patrol, which watches over parks spaces but whose numbers also tumbled following the cuts.  

Most of the positions restored in the FY26 budget are PEP officers, said Joe Puleo, president of Local 983, which represents PEP officers, park rangers and others. Puleo said as many as 450 PEP officers patrolled city parks in recent years, but following successive cuts and hiring freezes instituted by the Adams administration, their numbers have dropped to below 300.  

“It’s a mixed bag,” Puleo said of the finalized budget. “We're down at the lowest numbers when it comes to parks enforcement.”  

More officers, for the time being

The 2026 budget includes funding to add around 100 more PEP officers, but Puleo noted that the funding is on a year-to-year basis instead of a long-term baseline as is common for other Parks Department positions. 

That means Puleo will have to push for the funding to be renewed next year, and the PEP officers filling those positions likely won’t know if they’ll have their jobs next fiscal year until days before it begins. Puleo criticized the mayor for the instability in his union’s ranks. He called the Adams administration the “worst one in 27 years of me serving this union because our numbers have gone down the most during this administration and parks have not been prioritized." 

Ganser, of New Yorkers for Parks, said that the restorations and expansions in the budget are like “putting a brand new sunroof on a car that doesn't run." 

A spokesperson for Adams did not respond to a request for comment.  

Parks Department foresters who help manage urban forests across the city have suffered from the budget cuts as well, said Evon Magnusson, a forester in Staten Island.  

Magnusson said that as staffing has decreased, more work is placed on the staff who remain, and foresters who went from managing a single contract now must undertake three or four. The backlog in service has caused the city to rely on consultants who are not trained as thoroughly as those who work for the Parks Department, Magnusson and other foresters say. 

“So far Parks employees have worked hard to maintain a basic level of service, but many aspects of operations have gone from proactively managing the urban canopy to responding to emergencies as they come up,” said Magnusson, a Local 375 delegate. “This is a public safety and quality of life issue.” 

Parks workers and advocates ultimately want 1 percent of the city’s budget — or just over $1 billion — dedicated to the city’s open spaces every year. The figure is currently closer to 0.65 percent and after years of hiring freezes and cuts, some advocates have learned to lower their expectations — at least as long as Adams is mayor.  

“At this point parkies are so beat down that they don’t expect much from this administration anymore,” said one Parks advocate who is not permitted by their organization to speak with the media. “No one really expects Mayor Adams to come through and deliver a Hail Mary for the parks.”

hfreeman@thechiefleader.com