It’s July, which means that New Yorkers are outside, and in city parks.

But for the last three years, Mayor Eric Adams has been underfunding parks, and failing to live up to his campaign pledge of devoting 1% of the city budget to parks.

Our executive director Zara Nasir met with Adam Ganser, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks, an independent nonprofit focused solely on advocating for New York City’s parks, to discuss how Adams’ continued defunding of the park budget, and why New York needs to fully invest in the green spaces residents rely on.

You can watch the video here or read the transcript below.

And you can help grow our movement fighting for parks and all the essential services that New Yorkers deserve by making a gift to the People’s Plan today.

The People’s Plan: What has happened in the last three years under Eric Adams to the parks budget?

Adam Ganser: Well, the last three years have not been good for the park system or for the parks budget. We’ve seen roughly 795 positions disappear from the agency. We’ve been calling for those 795 positions to be restored, and that didn’t happen in this year’s budget cycle. So yet again we’ve seen Mayor Adams come up short when it comes to parks.

So 795 positions have been cut from the Parks Department over the last three years because of Eric Adams. What material impact do these cuts have for New Yorkers who are trying to enjoy the park system?

Adam Ganser: Well, these positions are boots on the ground positions, people in parks taking care of them. So things as simple as cleaning bathrooms or opening bathrooms are going to be problematic. Mowing lawns, taking care of ball fields, you name it, the parks are going to see the impact on that.

The other piece is that with a smaller staff, the workers are going to face a more difficult situation in the summer heat. And that’s not fair to New York City’s workforce. But I think the biggest impact, honestly is going to be on New Yorkers themselves. They’re going to find trash in their parks. They’re going to find bathrooms that are not open trees and gardens that are not maintained. And that is not the city that New Yorkers deserve.

So we’ve seen record heat this summer. There’s been 90, 100 degree weather and flooding in the New York City subway system. What role do parks play in defending New York City against climate change?

The unpredictable is now quite predictable. We’re seeing these events very, very frequently. New York City’s park System occupies roughly 14% of the city’s land. And that is a lot of permeable surface that can absorb water. So it’s a critical role, not to mention the trees that reduce heat, island effect, et cetera.

But the city doesn’t look at its park system as critical infrastructure in a fight against climate change. And that needs to change. We need a bigger vision around that. And that’s what we’re hoping to see with the next administration, whoever sits in that office.

So when Mayor Adams was candidate Eric Adams In 2021, he promised to devote 1% of New York City’s budget, two parks. Now Mayor Adams is running for re election again, as are other folks. What can the next mayor, whoever it is, do to support parks and support green spaces in New York City?

We need the next mayor to have an expansive vision for our city’s park system. New York City now ranks just 13th in the nation when it used to rank fifth in park systems, according to the Trust for Public Land. We need to have the best park system in the country for the densest city in the country.

Certainly maintenance is top of mind for everybody. We need more parks workers in our city’s parks, making sure they’re maintained and safe. We need to build new parks, both small and large parks, to bridge the gap for those communities that do not have access to parks. And it’s a large proportion of New York City’s residents don’t have a park within 10 minutes of their home.

We need to fix the way the city builds and maintains and fixes our city’s parks. I always point to bathrooms and trees as sort of symbolic of the issue. It takes forever to build a bathroom in New York City park, and it takes millions of dollars and it should not be that way.

And it’s New Yorkers who suffer. And then the last thing I’ll say is that we really do, as I mentioned before, need to look at parks as critical. Climate, infrastructure – invest in them not as luxuries, not as nice spaces, but as part of the fight against climate change and part of the fight for quality of life and livability in the future of New York and its residents.

And you also said that some of the workers that Eric Adams has hired can only expect their jobs to be around for the next year. So a lot of the position that are, you know, were put in place by the Adams administration are not reliable jobs for parks workers.

So for the 795 workers that the Parks Department needs to put back in place, what does that look like in terms of the stability for parks workers?

Adam Ganser: This is a sort of a lingering issue with the Parks Department ever since, you know, the really difficult fiscal era in the 1980s. The parks relies on a large percentage of temporary workers or one year workers. It takes time to hire those workers and then just when they’re up and running, they’re having to look for jobs because they have no guarantee that they’re going to have a job the next year.

So it makes it impossible for the agency to plan for the future and it makes it impossible for the workers to rely on dependable employment. That’s not the way to run an agency and it’s not the way to run an agency that is so important for New Yorkers and for our quality of life.