TESTIMONY
Keri Butler, Vice President of Planning and Policy of the Municipal Art Society of New York, on the Essential Role of Parks as Infrastructure and Need for Budget Restoration
6:35:40
·
117 sec
Butler testifies that parks and green spaces are essential infrastructure for public health, local economy, and fighting climate change. She argues they deserve funding equal to streets and sewers.
- Parks mitigate extreme heat and help sequester carbon to meet sustainability goals.
- Parks employees are dedicated but need adequate budget to do their work.
- Data and stories illustrate the need to restore parks budget cuts.
Keri Butler
6:35:40
Good afternoon.
6:35:41
My name is Carrie Butler, and I am with the Municipal Art Society of New York.
6:35:46
We are a proud member of the play fair for Parks Coalition and the forest for all coalition.
6:35:52
And we stand here in support of our colleagues to call all for you to urge to urge you to restore the parks budget and work toward 1% for parks.
6:36:03
I know you all have received a lot of data today, so I'm not going to repeat it all.
6:36:07
I do want to emphasize that parks are open spaces, are green spaces, our urban canopy, these are essential infrastructure.
6:36:17
They should be funded in the same way with the same attention that we give our streets and our sewers They are not nice to haves.
6:36:24
They are must haves.
6:36:26
And when I talk about social infrastructure, I mean, these are essential to our public health, mental physical.
6:36:33
You all know this, also our local economy, supporting local vendors, people of all ages coming to learn.
6:36:39
We talked about the marinas, we talked about Recreation centers.
6:36:43
The bathrooms, of course, are essential.
6:36:45
We talk about green infrastructure.
6:36:47
Okay.
6:36:48
These are this is critical to fighting climate change.
6:36:51
The extreme heat is the number one weather related cause of death in our country.
6:36:58
And trees are a powerful way to mitigate that and sequester carbon.
6:37:02
So this is these are all going to meet, as people already said, our plan, YC goals, our sustainability goals, as our mayor has said that he wants to do, So I do wanna also say that I worked in city government for 16 years and parks employees that I worked with were some of the most dedicated hardworking city employees that I worked with.
6:37:26
So it's not about them.
6:37:27
They're out there doing the hard work every day.
6:37:29
We need the money.
6:37:31
We need we have the data.
6:37:33
You've got the stories.
6:37:34
We need you to restore the budget.
6:37:36
Thank you.
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Merritt Birnbaum, President and CEO of Riverside Park Conservancy, on Underfunding of Parks and Its Impact on Park Maintenance
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Vanessa Butler, Speaking on behalf of Executive Director Heather Lubov of City Parks Foundation, on Advocating for Increased Funding and Staffing for NYC Parks