Park advocates are ramping up pressure on Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to quickly get to work on his promise to earmark 1% of the city government’s budget for spending on New York City public parks.
New Yorkers for Parks and the Play Fair for Parks Coalition, grassroots organizations that have long advocated for increasing city parks funding, are set to this week roll out a policy blueprint that they’re urging Mamdani to act on in his first 100 days as mayor.
At the top of the list is a plea for Mamdani’s first city budget proposal, due at the end of January, to include a big enough parks funding increase for the city to reach the 1% threshold within his first term.
The $688 million the Parks Department is currently allocated constitutes about 0.6% of the city government’s total budget.
Adam Ganser, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, said that bumping funding immediately up to the 1% benchmark isn’t realistic. But Ganser said his coalition hopes Mamdani’s first city budget bid both includes some immediate increases and lays out a clear path for how to get to the 1% level via additional funding hikes in subsequent years.
Ganser told the Daily News that’s especially important after Mayor Adams failed for each of his four years in office to make good on his 2021 campaign pledge to set aside 1% of the city’s budget for parks. Citing fiscal fallout from the migrant crisis, Adams instead enacted funding cuts that haven’t been reversed, resulting in the elimination of some 600 Parks Department job, including in the agency’s maintenance unit.
“Mayor-elect Mamdani now has the chance to reset the city’s priorities and prove on day one that parks are essential infrastructure, especially for working families,” Ganser said.
A rep for Mamdani, who’s set to be sworn in as mayor Jan. 1, didn’t return a request for comment on the parks budget demand.
Mamdani most recently affirmed his 1% parks budget commitment during the final mayoral election debate in October.
January’s preliminary blueprint is the first step in the budgetary process, which involves the mayor’s team and the City Council negotiating for months before they must come up with a final spending plans for all city government agencies by the July 1 start of the 2027 fiscal year.
Council Parks Committee Chairman Shekar Krishnan said he agrees with Ganser’s request for Mamdani’s preliminary budget. “I think it would be a great signal for the mayor-elect to send,” he said.
Besides the 1% budgetary pledge, the parks advocates’ blueprint urges Mamdani to, among other actions, end a hiring freeze at the Parks Department enacted by Adams and order repairs at every closed public park bathroom within 100 days.
