In one of his last major appointments, Mayor Bloomberg chose a parks department insider, Adrian Benepe, for his commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation. Benepe, who has been the Manhattan borough parks commissioner since 1996, first worked for the department during the summer as a teenager. Later, he began his career in the city's first class of urban park rangers, and has since held a broad range of positions at the department -- director of art and antiquities, director of natural resources, operations coordinator, and head of public information. He has also worked at the Municipal Art Society and the New York Botanical Garden.
Benepe is taking over from long-time parks commissioner Henry Stern at a challenging time. The parks department has less than half the fulltime staff it had 15 years ago to maintain 1,700 parks, playgrounds and recreation centers; its operating budget was never restored when the city's finances improved over the last decade. Nevertheless, Commissioner Stern was able to improve conditions in many parks. He made the department more efficient, found a way to use capital funds for maintenance, and raised money for the parks through a controversial policy of charging fees to private groups to use the parks for events. Several thousand part-time workers also supplemented the department's fulltime staff as part of a federally subsidized program to help welfare recipients enter the job market. Many parks are cleaner, safer, and better-appreciated by the public than they have been in years. This was made clear when New Yorkers spontaneously gathered in parks all over the city after September 11.
During last year's election campaign, a coalition of civic groups and park supporters called Parks 2001 secured promises from most of the candidates to increase public funding for parks and to distribute that funding more equitably throughout the five boroughs. But now the city is projecting a $4 billion budget deficit for the next fiscal year, and the parks department, like all city agencies, is instead being asked to make additional cuts. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed budget would reduce parks operating funds by 13 percent and would halve capital funding, which the department uses for smaller maintenance jobs as well as renovations and new projects. The city is also reevaluating the assignment of welfare workers to the parks department. The loss of funding and workers threatens to return the city to the era of dirty and dangerous parks.
To help offset the loss of public funding, Mayor Bloomberg has said that he will ask the private sector to do more. Parks already receive a great deal of financial and volunteer support from nonprofits and individuals. The papers recently reported that Commissioner Benepe is considering having corporations sponsor the maintenance of park facilities in exchange for naming rights. Benepe said that naming rights would be appropriate only in some circumstances, for example, athletic fields, and that the city would pass up opportunities that would over-commercialize the parks. "We are not selling off our parks to the highest bidder. We would rather go without than do something that is inappropriate," he told the New York Times.
New Yorkers for Parks, a new independent advocacy organization formed by the merger of the 100-year-old Parks Council with Parks 2001, supports the idea, as long as there is oversight of where the money goes and how facilities or parks are named, said spokeswoman Rowena Daly. "There needs to be a task force or plan so that the money benefits all five boroughs and every single neighborhood."
Greenways
In his State of the City address, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city would complete a longstanding plan for a recreational path circling Manhattan. "The success of the Hudson River Park demonstrates the need to make our entire waterfront accessible to walkers and cyclists," he said.
The mayor put his promise for a waterfront greenway in the category of "our livelihood, jobs, and development." This suggests that he will take a broader approach to economic development, and that he understands that investing in parks and recreation is a key factor in making the city a great place to live and do business in the 21st century. His focus on greenways is also pragmatic, because federal funding is available for 80 percent of greenway construction through the TEA-21 legislation that promotes alternate transportation. This is a project that can be done even in bad times.
All over the country, greenways - hybrids of parks, non-motorized travel routes, and recreation trails - have become increasingly popular. They claim a little space from an urban and suburban streetscape ruled by the car (or SUV) and truck. These landscaped pavements provide a safe, relaxing, and aesthetically pleasing way for people to get exercise or to get somewhere on foot or bicycle. Greenways also have the potential to reduce traffic congestion, air pollution, and gas consumption, and to encourage active recreation, all of which benefit the health of a city's citizens and its economy.
A prototype for this type of corridor is in Seattle, where more than a million people a year (three-quarters on bicycles) use the 25-mile Burke-Gilman Trail for both commuting and recreation. Studies have shown that real estate values have increased in areas accessible to the trail, and that the trail also spurred commercial and residential development. Other successful greenways are featured on Urban Parks online, a web site from the Project for Public Spaces, including Chicago's lakeside string of parks and Florida's 47-mile Pinellas Trail. It is easy to imagine how greenways, along with new parks, housing, and businesses, could transform the edge of Manhattan, which already has the built-in allure of great views and proximity to the water.
New York City has had a Greenway Plan for all five boroughs since 1993. The Department of City Planning created it from proposals developed earlier by the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, the Bronx borough president, and others. The proposed greenway runs 350 miles and has links to the East Coast Greenway, which will go from Maine to Florida. About 75 miles are complete, with another 80 in the works. According to David Lutz, director of the open space coalition, the Giuliani administration deserves credit for initiating the plan and moving it along. But until now, no mayor has actively promoted the concept, the way, for example, Mayor Giuliani promoted baseball stadiums. "For 15 years, we've been working on greenways in New York City," says Lutz. "All of a sudden it's no longer some wild-eyed idea."
Soon people should be able to bike, skate, and jog along much of the West Side as the Hudson River Park is completed and parks are linked all the way to the George Washington Bridge. But there are still numerous obstacles to closing the loop around northern Manhattan and down the East Side. And local volunteer groups have been pushing for the completion of paths planned along the downtown Brooklyn waterfront, the Bronx River, and elsewhere in the outer boroughs. One of the things the city could do right away is to review how city-owned waterfront property is used. Right now the city is parking cars, washing buses, and storing road salt on prime waterfront land. New York City Councilmember David Yassky, who heads the council's waterfront committee, plans to introduce legislation requiring the city to inventory its waterfront lots annually and to determine whether the use of each site is related to the waterfront.
New Yorkers are already voting for the concept of greenways with their feet. They are out in force, with cycles, scooters, skates, and strollers, the minute a new section of the Hudson River Park opens. To paraphrase the mantra of the greenway movement: "If you build it, Mayor Bloomberg, we will come."
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.
With a new mayoral administration and a new New York City Council, there may be some changes in how the city addresses the parks system. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been slow in naming a new commissioner for the parks department, but the City Council has already taken action by forming a separate committee for the oversight of parks and recreation. The new committee will be chaired by Joseph Addabbo, Jr., of Queens, who is considered a strong supporter of parks. Park advocates had been lobbying for this change. Previously, parks issues were addressed through a committee that also covered cultural affairs, libraries, and inter-group relations.
Although both Mayor Bloomberg and new New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller mentioned the importance of parks in their inaugural speeches and supported increased funding for parks during the campaign, it remains to be seen how the city's budget problems will affect park and recreation services. The parks department operating budget has declined 40 percent since 1986, although the capital budget was increased in recent years.
Now there is uncertainty about whether the parks department will lose the labor provided by thousands of former welfare recipients under a subsidized seasonal jobs program. The New York Times reported that just before the end of the Giuliani administration, the former human resources commissioner notified the parks department that he was shifting 3,500 former welfare recipients working for the parks department at union wages to a private temp employment agency paying a lower hourly wage. It is unclear whether they will be making this lower wage at the parks department, or whether they will be now working elsewhere.
About 200 of these parks workers whose assignment ends in February could be the first to be affected. Human Resources Administration spokeswoman Deborah Sproles said, however, that that no action has been taken so far, and that the change was being considered only as one option in an overall reassessment of the program. She says the city is looking at the program in the light of funding issues and of finding the right balance between private and public sector jobs. Yes, it is possible that the workers may not be reassigned to the parks department, she said. "The question is what is best for the workers -- that's going to drive what the final program looks like."
The welfare workers are paid mostly through a federal program and not from the parks department budget. During the past eight years, the parks department has come to depend heavily upon these workers to clean and maintain the parks as the number of regular parks employees has been cut. Parks department positions dropped from more than 4,000 in 1991 to about 1,900 now. A November 1, 2000 report by the Independent Budget Office looked at the contribution welfare workers made in improving park conditions at a time when the parks department lost more than half its staff. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's request to city agencies to cut their budgets by 20 percent is likely to further reduce the parks department's work force.
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.
Parks commissioner Henry Stern will not be asked to stay on in the Bloomberg administration, it was recently reported in several New York newspapers. The eccentric parks chief, who calls everyone in his department by a "park" name and often brings his golden retriever, Boomer, along with him on official business, has led the department for almost 15 years under two mayors. There have been a number of controversies during his tenure, including a racial discrimination lawsuit by black and Hispanic employees and inquiries into the setting and spending of fees charged for private organizations to use the parks. The commissioner also has been criticized for acquiescing to Mayor Rudy Giuliani's yearly pruning of the parks operating budget, leaving the department with less than half the staff it had in the mid-1980s. But Stern also expanded park acreage and initiated many capital projects. He thought up the Greenstreets program, which planted 800 traffic triangles and street medians. Although parks in less affluent areas were largely bypassed, his creative funding and staffing strategies have helped to make many of the city's parks more beautiful and well-used than they have been in decades. At a recent parks event, Stern said that he will continue to work on behalf of parks, and hinted that he will be freer to speak his mind.
The next parks commissioner will inherit a department with a greatly reduced budget and a shortage of staff, especially skilled workers like gardeners and plumbers. During the election, a broad-based coalition of grassroots, civic, and business groups advocated for increasing parks funding to one percent of the budget (from its current .04 percent) and setting maintenance standards that would be applied equally to parks in all parts of the city. Mayor-elect Mike Bloomberg and many newly elected city council members supported the goals of the campaign. But now economists are comparing the city's budget problems to the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. To make up for a $1 billion shortfall in this year's budget, Mayor Guiliani has proposed across-the-board budget reductions, including $4.6 million from parks. Next year's deficit is predicted to be $3.6 billion. "If everyone takes a cut, it's hard to argue that [parks] shouldn't take a cut," says Mike Klein, deputy director of the Parks Council. "But we want to remind people that the parks took a cut even when others did not."
In spite of the grim budget outlook, Klein is optimistic about Bloomberg's approach to parks because of the mayor-elect's experience as a board member of the Central Parks Conservancy. "We look for him to have very high standards for the parks system," Klein said. "We think Bloomberg has a terrific respect for how gorgeous and terrific public space can be, and look forward to working with him on expanding his standard of excellence throughout the city."
UNFINISHED BUSINESS FROM THE GIULIANI ERA
Community gardens
For years, tenacious community gardeners have been skirmishing with an equally tenacious Mayor Giuliani over the city's plan to sell to developers hundreds of city-owned vacant lots that were cleaned and greened by neighborhood groups. In his campaign literature, Mayor-elect Bloomberg said the city should work with community and civic groups to evaluate all community gardens; he also called for the establishment of a trust for parcels appropriate for garden use. Community garden advocates say they are waiting to see how these general ideas will translate into official policy. As of now, an injunction granted in a lawsuit by New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer is preventing the city from going through with any sales of community garden lots. The Bloomberg administration will have to decide whether to continue fighting the lawsuit or to negotiate with the attorney general.
Ball fields or woods?
A conflict in Staten Island over the fate of a natural area will also be carried over into the new administration. A local environmental group, Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, is suing to stop the city from building soccer and baseball fields and basketball and tennis courts in eastern Bloomingdale Park, a forested city park originally set aside for its natural values and for flood control. New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer and New York City Audubon have filed amicus briefs in support of the lawsuit. For now, construction is on hold while the lawsuits make their way through the system. The Staten Island political establishment is eager to build the fields, responding to pressure from sports groups and parents for playing space in the rapidly developing southern part of the island. The conservation groups want the fields placed at other, less environmentally sensitive sites. They also say that that it doesn't make sense to put ball fields on wet, hilly land - the fields would be costly to build and maintain, and could end up flooded and useless like fields built on damp ground elsewhere in the city. If they are right, the Bloomberg administration could end up with an expensive boondoggle. A study commissioned by the parks department found that constructing fields in Bloomingdale Park would cost four times as much as building the same fields at three alternative sites. The parks department originally opposed the plan, but was silenced by Mayor Giuliani.
Ferry Point Park
A plan for a new golf course on city parkland that was pushed through by the Giuliani administration may come back to haunt Mayor-elect Bloomberg. Environmental concerns continue to surface at the Bronx site, the 220-acre eastern section of Ferry Point Park. The park was formerly a municipal garbage dump located over wetlands along the East River. The city granted Ferry Point Partners, a private developer, a 35-year concession to construct and run the 18-hole professional-level golf course.
The Ferry Point landfill operated and closed before strict regulations governing the disposal of garbage went into effect, at a time when hazardous waste frequently found its way into municipal dumps. An environmental assessment conducted by a consultant to the developer found high levels of toxic chemicals, including PCBs, arsenic, and lead, in soil borings at the site. It also detected methane gas, which is produced by decomposing garbage and is explosive at high concentrations. But the parks department determined that the findings did not warrant a more thorough environmental impact statem ent. The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which is monitoring the project, gave its approval.
Even as trucks haul in rubble to cover the landfill and bulldozers reshape the terrain, two environmental groups and residents of a nearby housing project are suing to force the city and state to conduct a more comprehensive environmental review. To begin with, they say, the assessment never looked into the history of the landfill, and what was dumped there. They also suspect that toxic contamination is more extensive than the developer's assessment concluded because several potential routes for seepage of chemicals from the site were not investigated. Rainwater percolating through layers of garbage typically leaches contaminants into the groundwater, yet at Ferry Point there are no monitoring wells to detect what chemicals might be going into the groundwater or the East River. Also not looked into was the possibility that water could be entering the old dump from wetlands or springs underneath. Although test wells are checking methane levels, they are not measuring volatile organic compounds and other carcinogenic substances that tend to migrate along with the methane. Methane readings, however, have been dangerously high in several places. To deal with this unforeseen problem, Ferry Point Partners and the Department of Environmental Conservation are constructing blocks-long, gravel-filled venting trenches near the edges of the park. One trench is in a public park across from the housing project.
Most of the local politicians and the community board support the plan, which they see as a win-win proposition. The developer is underwriting the construction (throwing into the bargain a new community park and a waterfront promenade), and will pay the city an annual fee or a percentage of the golf course revenues if that is higher. But because the city indemnified the developer against "all losses, damages, costs, expenses or liabilities" stemming from preexisting environmental contamination, the city could be stuck with a hefty bill from environmental cleanups or lawsuits.
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.