Fighting to restore NYC’s parks budget

When you see daffodils bursting forth in New York City in early spring, that’s very likely the doing of The Daffodil Project, which for more than 20 years has been distributing millions of daffodil bulbs to New Yorkers to plant in the fall so that these first harbingers of spring can be enjoyed early in the following year. The project is one of the signature initiatives of New Yorkers for Parks, the more than century-old organization that advocates for funding for the city's massive park system as well as equity – urging that parks in low-income neighborhoods get some of the same loving care as parks in wealthy areas that often enjoy philanthropic support from groups like the Central Park Conservancy.

City & State’s New York Nonprofit Media spoke with Adam Ganser, who has been executive director of New Yorkers for Parks since 2020, including the group’s Play Fair for Parks Coalition, made up of more than 400 organizations across the city. He helms a staff of six and several consultants. Prior to heading New Yorkers for Parks, he played a large role in the development of The High Line, which he talks about here, among many other things related to parks, including the city’s new parks commissioner, Iris Rodriguez-Rosa. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Can you start by giving us a bird’s-eye view of the state of New York City parks?

It’s a critical moment for the city’s park system. We put out a report a few years ago that talked about the impact of the disinvestment in our city’s parks over the last 40 to 50 years. When the Adams administration came in, we had high hopes that that would change – in terms of the resources the Parks Department has to operate, maintain and program (events in) the city’s parks. But the disinvestment has continued, amid a city where it’s incredibly expensive to live, families with kids are leaving and quality of life is going down under almost any metric. Going to parks is one of the free things that people can do. So when parks are looking shabby or just straight-up dangerous, it doesn’t give people confidence and it lowers quality of life. In my role, I’d rather be talking about building new parks, about how they can contribute to environmental sustainability and climate control, and about how parks can foster affordable housing and creative design. And unfortunately we end up talking almost solely about diminished resources for the most basic things, like keeping park bathrooms clean and mowing the lawns.

In your report “1% for Parks,” you’re basically asking for the city’s parks budget to be raised from 0.5% to 1% of the total city budget, yes?

Yes – and to clarify, that jump would address only operations and maintenance – not the capital side. Most major American cities spend 1%-5% of their budget on parks. New York City used to spend well above 1%-2% before the 1970s. But the parks budget has hovered around 0.5%-0.6% the last 30 years. Mayor Adams campaigned on the goal of getting the budget back up to 1% but hasn’t gotten there. So now the Trust for Public Land ranks New York City’s park system 13th in the country, whereas once it was standard that we were in the top five. And you can see that demotion in our city’s parks. It’s embarrassing in a city as dense as New York City, where people rely on their parks like no other city.

What are the actual numbers versus percentages?

The entire city budget is roughly $115 billion and the parks budget has dropped to $580 million the last couple of years from $600 million-$650 million. So we’re looking at getting it up to $1 billion.

What would that increase cover?

The first priority is to make sure that people feel safe in their parks. So one thing would be investing in so-called Parks Enforcement Control officers, friendly ranger-like officers who can have a presence in the more than 1,700 parks citywide. Then we’d increase the ranks of general maintenance workers who do the dirty work of mowing the lawns and cleaning the bathrooms so that they are open past 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. and don’t feel like the apocalypse when you walk in there. Simple stuff like that. The entire forestry department, which cares for all the city’s parks as well as street trees, has been underfunded for decades. We would also increase programming. There was a time when the Parks Department managed programming of events and activities in the parks for kids and seniors. It was so long ago now that many New Yorkers don’t even know that. And on the administrative side, the Parks Department has only a handful of lawyers to manage hundreds if not thousands of contracts and license agreements to ensure this programming. So we’d also build up that staffing to make it a place where forward-thinking, ambitious people want to be – and where their work flow is manageable. In short, there just isn’t a part of the Parks Department that doesn’t need more resources.

Mayor Eric Adams on June 1 appointed Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, a longtime department staffer, as the new commissioner. Given that most of the department’s problems are budget-related, as we’ve discussed, can she make a difference?

She’s been with the agency for decades, working at every level, and is a good person for the role. She’s seen the need for more staffing for 40 years, so if a commissioner were going to be a good advocate for more funding, it’s her. She’s an incredibly kind and effective person.

Can you paint a picture of a well-funded New York City park versus an underfunded one?

I can do that if you promise to put in some context, which is that due to the bad financial state of the city in the 1980s, many parks volunteer groups around the city, made up of people who were interested improving their parks due to the sorry state of the city, coalesced into “Friends of” groups or full-blown conservancies. We now have about 50 such conservancies citywide, but only a few of them can raise significant dollars that make a true impact on the quality of the park. The top two are the Central Park Conservancy and Friends of the High Line, with a second-tier being the Prospect Park Alliance.

So Central Park, for the most part, looks amazing. The lawns are well-kept, the trees pruned, there’s a constant presence of parks workers and all sorts of public programming. It’s an extremely unique situation that the city benefits from because the park gets tens of millions of visitors a year.

Then look at almost any other park in the city. Look at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, which has a tiny conservancy of about four people. It gets nowhere near the care that Central Park does. Then go to Herbert Von King Park in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. It has no conservancy. It has an amazing recreational center, but it’s dilapidated, there’s trash overflowing and the bathrooms are not where you want to be or take your kids.

The fundamental inequity in the park system is not the fault of the conservancies, but the city’s government, which has more than enough money to make every single park a beautiful, safe place for New Yorkers.

What’s a utopian vision for New York City’s parks – if, say, the budget went up to $2 billion?

There needs to be a bigger vision about what parks do for the city. Parks are great places for people to go. But we don’t talk enough about how parks exist in a larger climate discussion. How can New York have a vision as Paris and London do about greening the city, making sure that every New Yorker can be within a five-minute walk to a city park?

Based on our research, the five community board districts that are the most starved for open space are Manhattan 10 (Central Harlem), Queens 2 (Hunters Point, Long Island City, Sunnyside and Woodside), Brooklyn 17 (East Flatbush and other neighborhoods), Brooklyn 11 (Bensonhurst, Gravesend and other neighborhoods) and Bronx 5 (Fordham, Morris Heights, Mount Hope, University Heights). In all these areas, there are people with creative ideas for developing new green spaces. You just need the political will to make it happen.

What about parks and the mayoral candidates? Are you going to endorse one or some?

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we can’t endorse. But I can say that the current mayor came in with a strong parks platform, basically NY4P’s own platform, and failed to deliver. The city fiscal year budget will be announced in a few weeks by the administration. We’re calling for $79.4 million to be added to the parks budget just to restore jobs that have been lost over the last three years.

We had a mayoral forum on parks about a month ago and all the candidates were saying the right things – that investment in parks is investment in the city and in quality of life. So that’s good.

What has been your career trajectory and what was it like being vice president for planning and design at Friends of the High Line?

I’m an architect with a background in architecture and real estate. I spent five years working on a large park in Orange County, California, on the site of a decommissioned Marine naval base. That’s where I got very interested in the politics and economics of these spaces.

After that, I ended up overseeing (the) design and construction of The High Line for 10 years, in partnership with the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations and with real estate developers. My role was really focused on getting it designed and built. There were two core things about the project. One was that it was a real estate project. It happened because of the rezoning of West Chelsea from manufacturing to residential. But at the same time, it was a visionary project reusing dilapidated infrastructure for public good, and it was really an honor to do that, enriching and fascinating. Toward the end of my time there, I was working with similar aspirational projects nationwide, looking at underutilized spaces that often were in the center of cities with an eye toward recreating neighborhoods, creating positive economic development and adding public open space.

The High Line has many different components along the route. Could you take one piece of it and talk about its development?

The Spur is this extension of The High Line on 30th Street where it juts out east to hover over 10th Avenue. It used to connect with the post office, which is how most mail in New York City was delivered. For a long time, The Spur was under threat of demolition in order to build Hudson Yards. So we had a massive campaign to save The Spur, which ultimately was successful. We spent three years with the design team thinking through what that space could be. Ultimately, it was about taking a less-is-more approach with this beautiful, historic, hulking odd thing. Making sure to preserve that beauty was a real priority. We added horticulture in meaningful, lush ways, but we also gave it a lot of clear, open space. Now it’s the centerpiece for The High Line’s public art program. Every 18 months, there’s a new public art installation there.

What ultimately swung the conversation with The Spur was zoning-related. By preserving it, Related (Companies, the real estate behemoth that co-developed Hudson Yards), was able to count it as part of their public open space, which allowed them to build less such space on the Yards itself.

Can you break down your job on a fairly typical day?

You must already know this from speaking with nonprofit executive directors, but the main thing I’m constantly worried about is raising money. The first thing I do every day is check in with my development team and figure out what we’re doing with foundations, private donors, events. After that, I work with community leaders, neighborhood groups and elected officials at every agency.

So I’m on the phone or on Zoom nearly every hour of the day, talking with different people who are going to help us achieve our goal of getting more resources for the Parks Department. We spend a lot of time in communities hearing about what is or isn’t happening there, or what needs to. Such as, we’ve worked closely with Friends of Tompkins Square Park on how they can formalize more and have a better relationship with the Parks Department. Or, about a year and a half ago, we were working with Van Cortlandt Park and the city to make sure that a temporary cricket stadium wouldn’t be built there.

What are you proudest of since you’ve helmed New Yorkers for Parks?

When I took over, it was the beginning of COVID and NY4P was really in a rough spot. So I’m proud of restructuring and rebuilding this organization into the go-to parks advocacy organization in the city. And that includes growing the Play Fair Coalition from fewer than 100 groups to nearly 450 citywide.

We’ve also made parks a topline issue for the leadership of New York City. A big moment was when every single candidate in the last mayoral election committed to our 1% for Parks campaign. Now, no candidate can escape the question of what they’re going to do for parks. And that’s because of our work with many different partners including (the powerful union) DC 37, which represents parks workers, and the New York League of Conservation Voters.

What has been the most consistently frustrating part of the job?

In an advocacy organization, you’re never really in control of the outcomes. What my team and I are in control of is to broaden our base, make our message clear and resonant and get people passionate. But none of that can guarantee the investment that we need. This mayor has cut the budget for parks several years in a row. That’s tremendously frustrating – not only because of all the work we’ve put in, but because of the negative impact on the daily lives of New Yorkers.

What do you think is your best skill?

I’m able to convince people to do things that they actually like to do. And I do that by demonstrating my own passion and belief and also by doing these myself. I don’t fear getting my hands dirty. I hope that sets a good example.

What’s your biggest weakness?

Despite my time with The High Line, I wasn’t really part of the nonprofit environment. My work there was very political and focused on design. I’m more accustomed to working in a more aggressive private sector. So this is a transition for me. I give full credit to my team because they’re all incredibly dedicated and hardworking, but at times they think I’m running this place like it’s Google. The pace of nonprofits is something I’ve slowly learned.

Of course I have to close by asking about your relationship to New York City parks. What’s your favorite? You’re a Brooklyner, so is it Prospect Park?

Ironically, I’m not a person who goes and sits on the lawn in a park. I get immediately bored. Most of my time in Prospect Park is spent biking or running. I really love smaller parks where you can sit with a friend and have coffee and then be on your way. New York City is full of those parks.

Having said that, my favorite park is The High Line, because I had a hand in developing it. But my next favorite is Randall’s Island Park. It’s one of the most amazing stories of going from a really scary place to being one of the most unknown, fascinating, beautiful public spaces in the city serving such diverse groups. It’s massive and full of sports fields, but also small contemplative spaces and paths with amazing views of different parts of the city. It’s been really well redeveloped by both the city and the Randall’s Island Park Alliance.