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TESTIMONY
Merritt Birnbaum, President and CEO of Riverside Park Conservancy, on Underfunding of Parks and Its Impact on Park Maintenance
6:33:07
·
149 sec
Birnbaum highlights the operational struggles faced by Riverside Park Conservancy due to inadequate funding for parks maintenance.
- She describes visible impacts like closed bathrooms, overflowing trash, graffiti, and vandalism resulting from staffing shortages.
- The Conservancy had 79 Conservancy Program Workers 15 years ago but only has around 20 currently.
- She calls on the Mayor to fulfill his promise of allocating 1% of the city budget to parks to ensure proper sanitation, safety, and staffing.
Merritt Birnbaum
6:33:07
My name is Mary Burnbaum.
6:33:08
I'm the president and CEO of Riverside Park Conservancy.
6:33:12
We are here to join with our play fair colleagues and demand the mayor fulfill his promise of 1% of the budget for parks.
6:33:19
Our district at Riverside is responsible for six miles 150 acres of public green space.
6:33:26
We work alongside our colleagues in the parks department to care for 5 parks.
6:33:31
That are critical to the health and happiness of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers on the west side Harlem and Washington Heights.
6:33:38
Our parks are in crisis.
6:33:41
We see it every day.
6:33:43
We see the bathrooms that are closed at 3 PM.
6:33:46
We see the overflowing trash cans on a Sunday afternoon.
6:33:50
We see it in the graffiti, in the acts of vandalism, and I wanna be clear that This is not because parks workers aren't doing their jobs above and beyond the call of duty.
6:34:00
It is because there are simply not enough of them.
6:34:05
The vast majority of parks don't have conservancies to help them, so our situation only underscores how dire this really is.
6:34:13
What does it mean to cut the parts budget?
6:34:15
Well, this year, it means somewhere between 600 and 900 fewer workers as we've heard But as you know, we are suffering from year after year of neglect and underfunding.
6:34:27
15 years ago in our district in River side, at this time of year, we had 79 CPWs working in our park.
6:34:34
Right now, we have about 20.
6:34:37
And we're still waiting to hear what the next couple of months will bring.
6:34:42
As you know, they do everything in our park They do all of the things that no one in the city wants to do picking up trash, cleaning out overflowing toilets.
6:34:51
They are the frontline of the parts department.
6:34:54
And in our district alone, they fall into about 25% of what they were 15 years ago.
6:35:00
It's a disgrace It's a disgrace that 5 decades ago.
6:35:04
There were 7000 of these workers, and now there are 4000 of them despite the fact that we have 200 more parks than we did 5 decades ago.
6:35:15
This mayor needs to fund parks.
6:35:18
He needs to fund the staff that we need.
6:35:20
If you dance for sanitation and safety.
6:35:23
He needs to take care of the sanitation and safety of our green spaces.
6:35:27
This is a rounding error as we've heard over and over again, but it means the world for the parks and the staff that we need to care for them.
6:35:35
Thank you.