Protecting the Commons: New York City Parks

OUTLINE OF MAJOR EVENTS

Parks Advocacy Day
On March 19, New Yorkers for Parks hosted Parks Advocacy Day, bringing 500 New Yorkers from all 51 City Council districts (including 200 children) to City Hall.

The day of advocacy officially launched the Parks1 Campaign. Thanks to PAD, Parks Lovers in attendance were given the opportunity to:

  • Clearly convey the state of their neighborhood park to their Council Member;
  • Urge city leaders to support the Citywide Legislative Agenda by funding, improving, promoting and protecting all parks;
  • Unite -- dog walkers to gardeners to soccer and softball aficionados – to demonstrate the need for an adequate Parks budget.

Report Card on Parks
On June 21, we released the Report Card on Parks and received extensive newspaper, radio and television coverage such as:

  • New York Times, Daily News, Newsday, community and ethnic newspapers.
  • Brian Lehrer’s talk show on National Public Radio and WFUV (Fordham University Radio)
  • Fox 5 Good Day New York, NY1, WPIX (Channel 11) and WCBS (Channel 2). 

The Report Card found that while the citywide grade for overall conditions improved from a C+ to a B-; 40% of the parks are still receiving a C, D or F.

More Money for Parks
The FY2006 budget passed by the Mayor and the City Council at the end of June was historic for parks in that it restored $9.4 million for seasonal workers such as playground associates and gardeners AND added $2 million in new funding for Park Enforcement Patrol officers.

The Department of Parks and Recreation, District Council 37 (the union representing the new workers) and NY4P coalition members credited our advocacy efforts with this victory. Allison Farina, Director of Government and Community Affairs and Anna Maria Jones, Manager of Community Affairs, deserve special recognition for their tireless work at executing a successful Parks Advocacy Day with more than 500 participants and being an ever-present force on the steps of City Hall.

NY4P Meets the Mayoral Candidates
This past June, the four Democratic Mayoral candidates met with our Board and supporters to discuss their park platforms. The first event was a cocktail party featuring former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer and Anthony Weiner’s Policy Director. The second event was a breakfast featuring Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and NYC Council Speaker Gifford Miller..

Mini-Report Card on Parks
Commissioner Benepe and others have criticized the Report Card on Parks for only evaluating each neighborhood park once and for releasing the findings almost 10 months after the inspection.  We believe that the consistency of findings over 3 years validates our approach.

Nonetheless, in response, we created the Mini-Report Card on Parks which uses a sample of 53 sites included in the larger group of 200 neighborhood parks from the Report Card on Parks and evaluates conditions of the following three features: comfort stations, water fountains and athletic fields.

We will release these findings at the end of September in the hope of making parks an issue in the general election. Prior to the release we will brief Parks Commissioner Benepe and offer briefings to the Ferrer and Bloomberg Campaigns.

 Parks1 Campaign
We successfully raised awareness (in the parks and on-line) of our city parks as an issue of great community importance in New York. More than 380 groups and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers visited parks1.org over the summer. 

In the parks themselves a vigorous campaign staff spurred tens of thousands of New Yorkers to declare themselves ‘New Yorkers for Parks’ by signing our Plea for Parks.

  • More than 30,000 New Yorkers signed the Plea for Parks to make NYC parks #1 in the Nation
  • More than 380 organizations joined the campaign as official partners
  • More than 80 candidates out of a pool of over 100 candidates for major offices agreed to our policies and signed the Pledge for Parks.

Our unified and disciplined campaign of well-framed common sense solutions were echoed in the next generation of elected officials’ stump speeches complete with Parks1’s exact language.  Campaigns and elected officials sometimes literally printed pages from the Parks1 website to find how to best convey the message that our parks deserve more attention. 

Parks1 Mayoral Forum
More than 500 park and recreation enthusiasts attended the Mayoral Forum where Democratic candidates Ferrer, Miller and Fields plus Republican candidate former Council Member Thomas Ognibene debated the issues facing parks.

The moderator for the July 26th forum was Dave Evans, Chief Political Reporter for WABC-TV Channel 7 news. The panelists were Errol Louis, Columnist for the Daily News, and Erik Engquist, political reporter for Crain’s Business.

At the conclusion of the Mayoral Forum, candidate C. Virginia Fields became the first of the major candidates to sign the Pledge.


TV Debate Quizzes Dems on Parks
Windows Media 9.0The Mayoral Forum was a huge success not only evidenced by the amount of press interest, but also in the fact that our forum’s well-briefed panelists went on to work later in televised debates where they asked our own parks questions.
 
Most notably was WABC’s primetime debate, where Mr. Ferrer answered the parks question by saying that he would indeed work toward 1% by adopting another of New Yorkers for Parks’  proposed policies: letting the parks keep what they earn in concessions.

The other candidates all expressed a desire to cure the inequity present in the City parks and spoke of the importance of parks in city life. Click on the picture above or the link below to see the newsclip from the debate.
http://www1.criticalmention.com/vg/ny4p/

Parks1 Parks-Storming Tour
Our field crew took the Parks1 message: “Make NYC Parks #1 in the Nation,” to a different Borough each week in the five weeks before the campaign.

We were present in the parks at neighborhood block parties in Queens, a Yankees baseball game in the Bronx, parades in Brooklyn, concerts in Manhattan and on the waterfront in Staten Island.

Tens of thousands of buttons, stickers, fliers and whistles found their way into the hands of a growing mass of New Yorkers for Parks thanks to the tireless efforts of our staff in different parks and events nearly every day all over this city.

Parks1 Fights for Parks Over a Jets Stadium in Queens
The Daily News ran a debate between Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and Parks1 Campaign Manager Justin Krebs about the wisdom of building a new “Jets” Football Stadium in Flushing Meadow Corona Park. 

For the full text, click here.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/345152p-294682c.html

Parks1 and Union Call on Mayor and City Council to Make the new 50 PEP Officers Permanent
Recently, on the steps of City Hall, Parks1 and DC37’s Local 983 (the union representing the Park Enforcement Patrol Officers), thanked the Mayor and City Council for hiring the 50 new officers, and called upon them to make these positions permanent.

Participants included: Mark Rosenthal, President of DC37Local 983, representatives of DC 37 Union Members which represents the PEP Officers, and Council Members Hiram Monserrate (Queens), Joseph P. Addabbo, Jr. (Queens), John Liu (Queens), and Margarita Lopez (Manhattan).  This press conference was covered by and will be followed-up with a story on WABC-TV Channel 7 within the next week.

Parks1 Receives Praise from Campaign Experts
“Personal Democracy Forum,” a group dedicated to monitoring and advising the merger of technology and politics for greater civic engagement wrote a glowing story about the successful strategy of the Parks1 campaign.

 “Parks1 is harnessing the Web’s inexpensive communications tools and social networks to spur interest in parks-related issues among voters and candidates and get the word out to the press. But the nonpartisan group hasn’t forgotten the importance of real-world interaction and old-fashioned grassroots advocacy. This 360-degree approach serves as a sign of advocacy campaigns to come.”

-Kate Kaye, Personal Democracy Forum
http://www.personaldemocracy.com/node/686

Here's my resume (.pdf also available)

SUMMARY

New York City, the number one city in the nation, spends less per resident on public parks than Chicago, Phoenix, Seattle, and San Francisco.

Currently, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation  (DPR) receives about .47% (200 million dollars) of the City’s annual operating budget. Increasing this number to a full one percent of the budget would guarantee one full-time park worker and enhanced maintenance for all 1,700 parks, and one playground worker for all 990 playgrounds citywide.

To achieve this goal of 1% for New York City’s parks, NY4P took advantage of the 2005 election season to carry out Parks1— a campaign to make New York City parks #1 in the nation by dedicating 1% of the City’s budget to parks and playgrounds by educating the public and candidates running for local office about the importance of the city’s parks and the need for additional public funding. 

Building on the successes and lessons learned from the Parks 2001 Campaign (conducted by NY4P’s predecessor, the Parks Council) NY4P partnered with community, open space and civic organizations for Parks1. The campaign aimed to highlight the important role that New York’s parks play in our daily lives and to gain support for a park funding increase from .47 percent to a full one percent of the City’s adopted annual budget. 

Parks1 offered city government officials concrete evidence that 1% of the city’s budget dedicated to parks is possible – through concessions reform, a key first step toward gaining 1% for Parks. Concession reform would allow the Parks Department to keep the approximately $50 million in revenue it generates annually through hot dog stands, gas stations, restaurants and other concessions located on park land.

Parks Advocacy Day marked the official launch of the Parks1 campaign. On that day, seven City Council Members (Parks Committee Chair Helen Foster, former Parks Committee Chair Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., Chair of the Public Safety CommitteePeter Vallone Jr., Parks Committee Member Gale Brewer, Council Majority Leader Joel Rivera, Transportation Committee Chair John C.Liu, and Environmental Protection Committee Member G. Oliver Koppell) signed the Parks1 Pledge— a commitment to work toward gaining 1% of the $47 billion budget for improving and maintaining parks.

For the duration of the campaign, NY4P hired eight canvassers, Field Coordinator, Partner Outreach Associate and Campaign Manager, as well as Marketing Consultant and Director of Online Outreach to spread the Parks1 message. Throughout the summer, the canvassers were actively out in the field at street fairs, parks and local events collecting signatures for the Plea for Parks every day and working with partner groups to call on all elected officials and candidates to make NYC parks #1 in the nation. 

On July 26th New Yorkers for Parks and the Parks1 campaign hosted a Mayoral Forum at NYU’s Skirball Center. Mayoral candidates C. Virginia Fields (D), Gifford Miller (D), Fernando Ferrer (D) and Tom Ognibene (R) joined more than 500 park lovers, recreation enthusiasts and open space advocates for a straight-forward discussion on park issues in New York City. The candidates shared their vision for the future of parks and answered questions posed by media moderators (Dave Evans, Channel 7’s Political Reporter; Erik Engquist, Crain’s Political and Government Reporter and Errol Louis, Columnist, NY Daily News) who were briefed on the issues by NY4P. 

At the forum, Fields, the current Manhattan Borough President, was the first and only mayoral candidate to sign the Parks1 Pledge. Former Bronx Borough President and winner of the Democratic mayoral primary Ferrer declined to sign the pledge, but said if elected he would dedicate the $50 million generated by park concessions each year back to parks. Though Fields was the only mayoral candidate to pledge the 1% to parks, the others all expressed a desire to cure the inequity present in the city parks and spoke of parks’ importance in city life.

Following the forum, parks became an important issue in the official Democratic primary debates, when Errol Louis of the Daily News asked in September if the candidates would follow the lead of cities like Chicago and work toward dedicating 1% of the city budget to Parks and Recreation.

Parks remained an important issue in the media and the elections over the summer and fall months, and just days before the general election, the parks issue garnered even more attention, after an attempt by Fernando Ferrer to show dire park conditions at a news conference in Harlem was thwarted when the DPR cleaned up the park where the conference was to take place immediately before Ferrer’s arrival.

Throughout the Parks1 campaign, 80 candidates for city office signed the Parks1 Pledge, 380 groups joined the Parks1 Coalition; and to date, more than 30,000 New Yorkers have signed the Plea for New York City’s Parks.

In 2006, as the winning candidates take office, NY4P will continue the campaign’s work to ensure that the electeds’ promises to work for an increase in the Department of Parks and Recreation’s budget are kept, by meeting with the newly elected officials and urging constituents to write letters to their council members.

This winter, the Parks1 website will be absorbed into NY4P’s main website (www.ny4p.org). It will become a daily blog with updates and discussions by park advocates and will serve as a community outreach tool to engage more New Yorkers in parks issues. The program will continue its work throughout most of 2006, leading up to the passage of the city’s fiscal year 2007 budget in late June.