Mayor Eric Adams’ Unfulfilled Promise for New York City Parks

New York City’s parks and natural areas are crucial to resilience against the many climate change-related pressures that the metropolis faces. Parks offer residents respite from the dense urban landscape. They also absorb water during storms, limiting flooding, and provide shade, protecting many New Yorkers from the worst impacts of extreme heat. 

Wetlands, which are also maintained by the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, can help prevent tidal flooding by absorbing immense amounts of rainfall and wave action.

But city parks are not invulnerable. Last fall, brush fires erupted in multiple city parks and in forests in nearby New Jersey, and the city faced the possibility of the first drought emergency in 20 years. 

As Inside Climate News reported last summer, chronic understaffing in the department led to the increased spread of invasive species, poorly maintained bathrooms, and weakened resilience to flooding and extreme heat. 

This is especially true for smaller parks in less affluent neighborhoods, which might not have well-funded conservancies to care for their green spaces—unlike Central Park or Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Now, as the city’s mayoral race is in full swing, many parks advocates want to see more done by the next mayor to keep these areas healthy. Mayor Eric Adams is running as an independent in this race but has struggled to reach double digits in the polls, lagging far behind state Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, who won the democratic primary, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The next mayor will set priorities for the city’s budget—and whether to meet the demands that many city council members and residents have long been calling for: designating 1 percent of the city’s budget to the Parks Department. 

Adams came to power in January 2022 at a pivotal moment as the city was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed thousands of New Yorkers and decimated countless local businesses. According to Adam Ganser, the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, this time underscored the vital role of the city’s parks.

“There was such a clear need for parks and open spaces to be accessible, well-maintained, and places of refuge for all of us who are living in the city,” Ganser said. “COVID ended up really bringing attention to the deplorable conditions of so many of our city’s parks and the lack of staffing and funding.”

The New York City mayor, a role often referred to as the “second toughest job in America,” sets the agenda for the city’s massive budget. For this fiscal year, it is around $116 billion, nearly as much as the budget for the entire state of Florida. The mayor also vetoes or signs City Council legislation and appoints department heads for his administration.

Adams committed early in his campaign to push for 1 percent of the city budget to fund the Parks Department—part of a demand by the Play Fair for Parks coalition, a movement of hundreds of city organizations to address issues in local parks. 

So far, Adams has not delivered. During his administration, the Parks Department has accounted for about 0.6 percent of the city’s budget. 

“That’s been, for a lot of us in this sector, one of the most disappointing outcomes of the past almost four years now,” said Emily Walker, the senior manager for external affairs at the Natural Areas Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for the care of natural areas in the city. 

“We had a commitment from him as a candidate on the campaign trail that never really ultimately came to fruition,” she said.

At a June press conference, Adams vowed to “continue to increase the numbers in the Parks Department” and that in his next term, “we’re going to probably double that amount.”

Many conservation and parks advocacy groups have long fought for increased funding. They argue that allocating 1 percent, or slightly more than $1 billion, of the city’s $116 billion budget, to the Parks Department would improve its operations. The additional money could help address staffing shortages, improve some infrastructure and bolster general maintenance. 

This fiscal year, according to the executive budget, the Parks Department has been allocated $667.3 million—more than last year, but only around 0.57 percent of the total budget.

In comparison to other large American cities, like Chicago, New York is woefully behind. Chicago’s total budget for fiscal year 2025 was around $17.3 billion. The Chicago Park District, which manages the 8,800 acres of the city’s green space, was allocated $598.5 million that year, which amounts to around 3.5 percent of the city’s total budget—proportionately almost 7 times more than what New York City gives for the care of its local parks. 

Though the Parks Department budget was already around 0.6 percent of the total New York City budget when Adams took over, he has struggled to increase its funding. 

In 2023, as part of a program to address budget shortfalls, Adams demanded cuts across agencies and eventually instituted a citywide hiring freeze. This had a significant impact on the Parks Department, leading to staff reductions and a decline in the quality and frequency of park maintenance.

By May 2024, the City Council was demanding a restoration of $38.2 million for the Parks Department to bring back an estimated 659 positions that had been lost. The council’s concerns largely went unaddressed in last year’s executive budget, which showed a marked decline of more than $55 million in park funds compared to the preceding year. 

The mayor releases the executive budget after a round of negotiations with the City Council. A final round of talks ensues before the adopted budget is passed—though there could still be some spending adjustments made during the year. 

Last fiscal year, the second round of negotiations brought some gains for the department with an additional $15 million allocated for extra cleaning shifts—but it fell far short of the total $1 billion figure that New Yorkers for Parks and other organizations had pushed for.

This fiscal year, the mayor increased funding for the city’s forestry service, urban park rangers and the GreenThumb program, which supports community gardening programs. Adams’ budget expanded to include second cleaning shifts at 64 parks, and money to hire an additional 170 Parks Department employees. 

Despite this, Ganser says the department remains understaffed, particularly in the forestry and general maintenance units.

“Those are critical positions that make sure that parks feel safe and they are clean,” said Ganser. “We’ve seen real reductions in those numbers.”

According to the agency staffing dashboard published by the city’s comptroller, the Parks Department has 4,660 full-time employees as of August. That count is 432 employees below what the administration budgeted, a 8.48 percent vacancy rate—higher than the total city government vacancy rate of 5.89 percent.