“City parks and recreational facilities are suffering because the Parks Dept. continues to eliminate the full-time maintenance and recreation staff who are responsible for upkeep,” Local 1505 President Michael Hood told the City Council March 12.

At a preliminary budget hearing in City Hall, Mr. Hood, who chairs the DC 37 Parks Policy Committee, testified for his local, which represents 1,100 City Park Workers, and six other DC 37 locals.

Speaking for Locals 299, 375, 983, 1506, 1507 and 1508 — which represent Gardeners, tree care crews, uniformed officers, recreation staff and other workers — he asked the council to increase funding for maintenance operations and hiring full-time staff.

City Council members Guillermo Linares and Annette Robinson, who chaired the hearing, said they would recommend DC 37’s position to the full council.

The mayor’s proposed budget for 2002 continues to downsize the Parks work force and scale back services at the city’s more than 50,000 acres of parkland — beaches, playgrounds, gardens and conservation wetlands.

Budget allocations for the agency have decreased by more than 40 percent since 1986. The city devotes a paltry half-percent of its total budget to parks, leaving them seriously underfunded and extremely short-staffed. Even the Mayor’s Management Report admits that recreation spaces are dirtier citywide.

And while New York City proudly proclaims itself the capital of the world, other major American cities carve out bigger slices of their budgets for park maintenance than the Big Apple.

The Big Apple is dirty
While New York City spends $41 per resident to maintain its parks, Chicago spends $114, Boston spends $96 and San Francisco, with one-tenth of New York’s population, spends $95 per resident to keep its parks clean and beautiful, according to a report by The Parks Council, an advocacy group.

In the last decade, the Parks and Recreation Dept. reduced its staff ranks by almost 60 percent, leaving just 2,011 full-time employees to do the work that a force of 4,600 once handled.

The city is replacing union workers with seasonal and per diem workers, mostly from the Work Experience Program, Mr. Hood said, instead of implementing the Transitional Jobs Bill passed by the City Council last year to hire full time workers.

“Unless the assumptions promoted in this latest budget proposal are reconsidered,” Mr. Hood said, “the city will be guilty of turning its back on its parks and recreational facilities.”

In a question-and-answer session afterwards, he stressed that “the problem can be resolved by reinstating civil service tests on a regular basis to replenish the workforce and provide a career ladder for Parks workers.”