Advocates Flay Mamdani over Proposed Parks Department Budget Cuts

Scores of advocates braved a cold light rain to stand on the steps of City Hall on Monday March 23 and alternately flay and cajole Mayor Zohran Mamdani into honoring his campaign promise to keep the Parks Department fully funded. To the dampened but undimmed “parkies”—an affectionate term both for zealous parks activists and Parks Department employees (the latter of whom were not present)— that number is 1% of the total city’s budget.

The event, which began at 10:30 a.m. with temperatures in the low 40s, was scheduled to precede a preliminary City Council budget hearing being held afterwards at 250 Broadway.

As it stands, the “parkies” contend, Mamdani’s preliminary Fiscal Year 2027 budget includes a $33 million cut from former Mayor Adams’ funding, which advocates had already decried.

Though the crowd was jovial, their rancor was close to the surface, since both as an Assembly Member and Mayoral candidate, Hizzoner was an outspoken critic of Adams’ parks—and library—funding habits.

Posting from his X account on Nov. 18, 2024, for example, Mamdani wrote, “As a candidate, Eric Adams promised he would dedicate at least 1% of the budget to parks. Instead, he’s slashed funding and cut staff, including forestry specialists who prevent the brush fires we’re witnessing across the city during this drought.”

What the Parkies Said

Among the dozens of groups represented under the banner Play Fair for Parks were New Yorkers for Parks; the City Parks Foundation; the Riverside Park Conservancy; the Battery Park Conservancy; Friends of Sara D. Roosevelt Park. “Parkies” from Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx were also present, as were Council Members Harvey Epstein, Tiffany Cabán and Ty Hankerson.

All the rally speakers stayed on topic—parks funding—and refrained from questioning any other city expenditures, or blaming anyone but Hizzoner.

Joan Keener from The Trust for Public Land, and the Deputy Director New York City playgrounds program that uses schoolyards as community playgrounds said, “The struggle to live here isn’t just about housing, it’s about quality of life, families raising children in small apartments wonder where can my children play safely without adding a line to the budget?”

“This year’s parks budget as you heard over and over, was cut by $33 million compared... $33 million is a drop in the bucket of a budget of $129 billion.”

Ty Hankerson is chair of the City Council Parks and Recreation Committee and a former Chief of Staff for Adrienne Adams. Speaking with the poise and cadence of a skilled Black minister Hankerson declared:

“We have a message today to the administration, and that message is you cannot walk back a promise you have made! You promised us that you would be better than your predecessor, so stick to your words. Our parks are vital to this city and the mayor knew that during his campaign and that’s why he committed to bringing 1% to our parks.”

“Two months later, we are seeing a full walk-back on that promise, not even a single step of good faith in the right direction...We all know parks were our everything during the pandemic and when we needed fresh air, that was a space for us, our green spaces. We’re talking about safety, we’re talking about mental health, we’re talking about environmental justice, we’re talking about social justice, all in one.”

“The city already struggles with equitable parks access—fewer trees, lower canopy coverage and rising heat indexes... Yet, despite all of this, the [administration’s] January plan cuts the agency’s total budget by $33 million. [BOOS!] And instead of adding, it reduces the number of full-time for our workers, our ‘parkies.’ Underfunding our parks forces bad choices for the city.”

The Mamdani Administration Responds

Asked the mayor’s thoughts, spokesperson Jeremy Edwards offered “The mayor remains committed to achieving the 1% for parks pledge by the end of his mayoralty to fund the Parks Department because affordability is about more than rent and groceries. It’s about whether working people have beautiful, safe, well-funded places to gather and rest without having to spend a dollar.”

The key phrase here is “by the end of his mayoralty”—which might be December 31, 2033 if he is re-elected to a second term.

City officials pushed back on some numbers cited at the rally, and asserted that “the administration will continue working to ensure that Parks is sufficiently funded.” Specifically, the administration denies that it presented a $33 million budget cut, noting this figure was a one-time allocation made by the City Council for the Parks’ Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget, “for various needs and council priorities, for that fiscal year only.”

City officials added that compared to the last Adams budget, submitted in November 2025, the FY27 Preliminary Budget, released in mid-February, increased the Parks’ budget by $3 million.