With a surplus in city revenues, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is handing out goodies to a number of constituencies in his election-year budget. But for the parks department, it’s another year on a low-calorie diet.
Although in recent years New York City has increased its capital expenditures for renovating old parks and creating new ones, it spends less per capita on maintaining and operating parks than most major U.S. cities. In 2003, the city spent $32 per resident, compared to an average of $60 per resident in 36 major U.S. cities, according to the Center for Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land.
Most observers agree that the parks department does a good job with limited resources. In addition, private funding has helped transform Central Park and others into green gems and continues to pay for the gardeners and other workers who keep them that way. But especially in the outer boroughs, many parks have worn grass and patchy plantings, locked or broken bathrooms, dusty and littered playing fields.
In its 2004 independent assessment of conditions at small neighborhood parks, The Report Card on Parks, the parks advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks gave almost a quarter of city parks a failing grade. It found that more than half the bathrooms were either closed or dirty and unsafe, 27 percent of the athletic fields were unacceptably maintained, and half of the sitting areas were littered, among other things.
The decline in funding over the last two decades has most affected the fulltime parks staff, which has decreased 60 percent in the last two decades. Most maintenance is now done by roving crews of temporary workers enrolled in a job-training program funded through the Human Resources Administration. Few parks have a staff person -- a "parkie" -- assigned to their care the way they once did, someone with a responsibility for that park and a relationship with its community. The department has also reduced the number of skilled workers, like gardeners, tree pruners, and plumbers. The 2005 budget, for example, funded for just 12 plumbers citywide -- one for every 53 bathrooms, 159 water fountains and 5 pools.
The Same Old Budget Game
Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed operating budget for parks this year is essentially the same as last year. Actual city funding is $196 million, down slightly from last year’s $201 million. The executive budget once again proposes eliminating the entire street tree pruning program, as well as $7.3 million for about 600 seasonal workers; the three previous budgets have done the same thing, though the City Council usually restores both items, at least in part.
"It’s the same song and dance we have every year," said Maura Lout, research director at New Yorkers for Parks. "The mayor cuts the budget with the understanding that the Council will restore it. It really prevents us from taking the step we need, which is enhanced resources for the parks department."
The budget adds some new funding, however, for staffing at the 54th Street Recreation Center and the new park at Fort Totten, as well as for fighting the Asian longhorn beetle. In addition to the $197 million in city operating funds, there are interagency transfers of $42 million, about the same as last year, for workers in the job training program; $20 million for staff overseeing capital projects; and $5 million in federal block grant funding.
A Promise Unfulfilled
During the 2001 election campaign, in response to grassroots lobbying organized by New Yorkers for Parks, Mayor Bloomberg and a number of City Council members pledged to increase parks funding to one percent of the city budget.
After September 11th and the fiscal difficulties that followed, funding for parks was cut, along with that for other city agencies. In the last couple of years, funding has returned to the levels of the 1990s, around half a percent.
But parks advocates are crying foul now that the mayor has a surplus that he is willing to spend. "While it’s a great budget for many city agencies, it’s not a great budget for parks. We’re waiting for a restoration and an increase after decades of cuts," said Lout of New Yorkers for Parks.
As the 2005 election approaches, park advocates have begun a new effort to get a commitment from candidates for greater park funding. In its Parks 1 campaign, New Yorkers for Parks is asking candidates again to pledge to work toward allocating one percent of the city budget to parks.
As a specific first step, it is asking them to support legislation allowing the parks department to keep the roughly $40 million it gets in revenue from concessions such as restaurants, golf courses, and hot dog stands, in addition to its regular city funding. "It’s very easy for candidates and elected officials to say they are pro-park, but it is very easy not to put any muscle behind it," said Justin Krebs, campaign director of Parks1.
Many other cities direct parks-generated revenue back to the parks. Some park supporters oppose the idea, however, warning that it would tempt the city to cut funding further and would result in greater commercialization of the parks.
Will advocates have more success this time in increasing resources for the parks? With other essential city services, like education and transportation, also in need of greater funding, it is easy for elected officials to continue to view parks as a luxury, far down on the list of priorities. The city has also turned increasingly to the private sector to take on the responsibility of caring for the parks. The cities with the best-maintained park systems often have some type of funding mechanism specifically for parks, unlike New York City, where park funding is at the mercy of the annual budget process and politics.
Yet the constituency for parks is getting larger, in tandem with the growing number of people contributing time and money to their local park. In April, 500 park and community garden supporters spent the day visiting the offices of City Council members. They came from all five boroughs to air concerns about their neighborhood parks and to ask for increased funding for parks.
More than half of the City Council members have signed the pledge, along with Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall. So far, Mayor Bloomberg has not taken a position, although according to New York Metro, the free daily, his spokesman Jordan Barowitz said, "The Parks Department deserves every penny that the city can afford, but unless you identify a new source of revenue, that money from concessions is used to educate our children, pay our police officers and build affordable housing."
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.Â
How many trees are there on New York City streets?
That question will be answered this summer by some thousand volunteers in a project called "Trees Count." Aside from counting every tree, the volunteers will collect basic data on each tree's location and species; they will also use handheld computers donated by Hewlett Packard to measure the diameter of the trunk and the crown.
All this data will be entered into a common database, then run through an economic model to determine not just how much it would cost to replace each tree, but also to assess how much each individual tree is worth.
"No one has really placed a value yet on the urban forest," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "This will help us do that."
In a city that just earned yet another set of failing marks for air quality from the American Lung Association, parks managers are eager to quantify to the penny how New York City street trees improve the air and diminish energy consumption.
The first tree census in the city, conducted in 1995, came up with a total just under 500,000 trees.
Officials estimate that the number this time around will be about the same. This is true even in the face of a short-term reduction in the local tree population. Noting the recent discovery of an Asian longhorn beetle eggs, Parks Commissioner Benepe promised an "aggressive" response. "Any trees found to have insects will be chopped down, chipped, and the chips will be sent to the incinerator," he said.
Such promises reflect the management philosophy that, in an era of diminishing budget resources, it's better to amputate and be safe than waste precious time and resources developing a more nuanced approach. One reason for the tree census, notes Jennifer Greenfeld, director of the New York Tree Trust, is to give future resource managers a clearer picture of what corners of the city are doing well and what corners aren't.
"[A census] helps us figure out how to balance our resources, how to adjust our palette in terms of how we respond to different problems ," says Greenfeld. "This is the one thing that helps give us a snapshot so we can plan what to do."
Although the 1995 tree census took note of tree condition, this year's count will take more notes on the types of things that lead to the biggest maintenance headaches -- things like powerline and sidewalk interference and the tree guards which protect trees over the short term but can restrict growth over the long term. Losing larger, more established trees to such problems is especially painful from a management perspective, Greenfeld says, because larger trees provide exponentially more shade, oxygen and pollution-filtering power than their sapling replacements.
"A tree is probably the only investment that a city makes that increases over time," Greenfeld says. "Unlike a sewer line, which gets less useful the older it gets, you want to keep [a tree] in the ground as long as possible."
To help prove that point, New York Tree Trust will be relying on an economic model developed by the Center for Urban Forest Research, a laboratory at the University of California at Davis that is funded by the U.S. Forest Service. Dubbed STRATUM, the model estimates growth rates by species and location and then multiplies the resulting size estimates with biological data and economic estimates on the social cost of airborne pollution and energy production. The end result, says center director Greg McPherson, is a bottom line summary of each tree's ability to reduce carbon, pollution, and energy bills over time.
"It provides the other side of the equation which is that trees are an investment," says McPherson. "If you increase your investment, you can provide yourself more of a return over time."
McPherson's lab has analyzed census data from cities such as Berkeley, Calif., Minneapolis, and Bismarck, N.D. Estimates on the "return on investment" for each tree planting vary by city. In Berkeley, the return on every dollar spent was $1.37. In Bismarck, the return was $3.09 for every dollar spent.
New York has tried to assess its trees before, in a 2001 study that concluded that urban trees statewide had a compensatory value of $84 billion and a carbon storage value of $500 million. David Nowak, lead author of the 2001 study, says pricing models are popping up in court cases to assess the value of damaged trees or stolen timber and could lead to even more creative uses. Last year, for example, the Office of the New York Attorney General mandated $47,000 worth of tree planting in a January, 2004, settlement with four school bus companies accused of excessive idling, one of the first attempts by a government agency to include trees in the bargaining process on air pollution.
Nowak expects this trend to continue, noting that trees are a classic example of a benefit enjoyed by society as a whole coming at a cost only to the individual or agency that planted the tree. This is the exact opposite of air pollution, which comes at no cost to the factories or automobiles, etc. that produce it, but produce damage felt by society as a whole. Economists call the first example, the tree, a "positive externality," and the second, the pollution, a "negative externality." Both are "external" to the ordinary marketplace's ability to set a price. Assessing the damage or benefits often falls on state agencies.
"A lot of things we can't quantify yet, but some of the things we can," says Nowak.
The Trees Count project was launched with an Arbor Day tree planting ceremony outside the Little Sister of the Assumption Family Health Service in Spanish Harlem, a neighborhood currently experiencing the highest childhood asthma rates in the country. According to a 2003 study involving researchers from Columbia University and Harlem Hospital, a quarter of all children in east Harlem suffer from asthma, more than four times the national rate. Looking past the current tree census, both Benepe and Greenfeld point to Trees for Public Health, managed by the Hunts Point environmental group Greening for Breathing.
Trees for Public Health seeks to reduce local air pollution levels in a corner of the city plagued by automobile exhaust and has, to date, relied on a patchwork funding from city, state, and federal agencies. One way to guarantee a steady stream of funding, Benepe says, would be to confirm a direct causal link between money spent on trees and money saved at local asthma treatment centers thanks to declining admissions.
"We've gotten to the point where people understand anecdotally why urban trees are valuable," says Benepe. "Our next step is to quantify that value. For that we need the help of the scientific community."
The 2005 Trees Count project starts on June 1, 2005. Volunteers who would like to help out can register by calling 311 or visiting the city's "Trees Count" web page. The Parks Dept. is asking volunteers to donate at least 40 hours of their time, plus a three hour training session. The training sessions begin in the second weekend of May. Event sponsor Bank of America, meanwhile, is offering $1,000 to the adult New York City resident who comes closest to guessing the final street tree tally. The free entry form, which requires physical address and birthdate, is located here.
Forty years ago this week, Mayor Robert Wagner signed a bill establishing the landmarks law and forming the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The legislation and new city agency were created in response to a growing concern about the loss of historically, culturally, and architecturally significant places like Pennsylvania Station, which was demolished in 1963. To date, the commission has designated 1,119 individual landmarks and 83 historic districts, totaling 23,000 buildings.
But some argue that the landmarks law is not living up to its promise and much more must be done to save the city’s historic places.
Some buildings are threatened by new development. Other structures are at risk because owners do not have the financial resources - or refuse to spend the money - needed to maintain them. Decisions about the future of other sites are stalled by local politics.
“While 40 years of landmark preservation is indeed cause for celebration, many preservationists are not in any mood to pop open the champagne,” Kate Wood of the group Landmarks West wrote in an article for Gotham Gazette.
Here are ten sites in New York City – buildings, houses, churces, a shipyard, and even a swimming pool – that preservation groups are trying to save for future generations of New Yorkers.
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