Democratic primary candidates discuss policies relating to parks and open spaces at New York Law School on April 8, 2025. Image Credit: New Yorkers for Parks/Jordana Townsend.
By Mark Chiusano
New York City’s parks are touchstones for all residents – including candidates for mayor.
Among those 30,000 acres are “where my kids learned to walk,” said Comptroller Brad Lander, and where State Senator Zellnor Myrie biked and got a “reprieve” from his asthma. Former comptroller Scott Stringer’s children practically “live in the parks,” he said, summing up the prevailing view: “The way our parks will go will define how our city goes.”
These were among the points of agreement at a mayoral candidate forum on parks, recreation, and open space held at New York Law School (NYLS) on Tuesday. More divergence of opinion emerged when it came to various pressing questions for New York City’s greenery: how to fund, expand, and protect it.
The forum — co-hosted by NYLS’ Center for New York City and State Law and the nonprofit New Yorkers for Parks, along with its partners in the large Play Fair for Parks coalition — included seven Democrats vying for the party nomination in June: City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, former Assemblymember Michael Blake, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, Lander, Myrie, and Stringer.
State of the Parks
The city’s green spaces have declined in cleanliness and overall condition in recent years, according to the City Parks Department’s own data. The candidates highlighted these shortcomings, including public restrooms that Stringer described as “disgusting.”
Suggestions to get back to baseline included:
Lander: attacking a repair backlog in Parks totaling $600 million: “Even reducing it by half in the first term of the next mayor will be very ambitious, but that is going to be my target,” he said.
Adams: fighting to reverse a trend of lost personnel, including for cleaning: “The top is to put back that head count that the mayor has taken away.”
The candidates also discussed quality of life and safety issues in city parks, with Stringer proposing a deputy mayor for quality of life, as well as hiring more police officers. Myrie said he would hire more parks enforcement patrol officers, and highlighted his after school for all initiative, which he called potential relief for parents but also a public safety tool: “in the after school hours, that is when our kids are getting involved in things we don’t want them to get involved in.”
Mamdani and Blake discussed more mental health resources for people in need in and around parks, as well as infrastructure changes like more lighting as opposed to increased punitive enforcement. “More cops does not lead to better safety automatically,” Blake said, disagreeing with Stringer. Lander flagged his wider campaign pledge to “end unsheltered homelessness for people with serious mental illness in New York City” and connected it to public safety and quality of life concerns in parks.
Fiscal Issues
Advocates have long pushed for more funding for New York City parks, which currently makes up about 0.6% of the city’s roughly $115 billion budget. Mayoral hopefuls routinely say they support the push for “1% for Parks,” to get at least 1% of the budget (roughly $1.1 billion). Eric Adams made that pledge when running successfully for mayor but has not made it a priority and has instead cut Parks funding during his tenure, particularly by eliminating budgeted headcount at the Parks Department.
Speaker Adams, who is negotiating her fourth city budget with Mayor Adams (no relation), discussed her ongoing fight with the mayor to restore funding: “We are allocating $32.5 million as we speak, in this FY 26 budget,” she said, referring to the fiscal year 2026 budget that is due by the July 1 start of the fiscal year. Most of that money would go toward staffing of various types, the top priority for parks advocates and experts, including City Council Member Shekar Krishnan, the chair of the Council’s parks committee, who was in attendance for Tuesday’s forum and was repeatedly credited by candidates, especially the speaker who appointed him to the chair position.
New Yorkers for Parks and other advocates are calling for the restoration of about 800 Parks Department positions that have been eliminated in recent years to deal with everything from regular maintenance to capital projects and programming for kids and adults.
Speaker Adams touted her work on prior budgets to push back on some of Mayor Adams’ cuts, but said the Council had not been more successful because the mayor was determined to cut budgeted headcount and instituted a two-out, one-in hiring rule.
The mayoral candidates broadly support more money for the agency, as well as different revenue raisers that could direct more money to parks: Mamdani called for fees such as a community parks surcharge added to the tax on property sales or transfers; Blake wants a vacant apartment tax for people not living in New York; Stringer said he would partner with the private sector to invest in parks; Lander cited the possibility of more concession sales in parks; Myrie supports the idea of an arena ticket surcharge for events around the city, as well as more city personnel to go after owed taxes.
Stringer also noted a fiscal reason to invest in parks: avoiding “claims against the city” for issues such as injuries related to tree branches dropping and hurting people. If the appropriate number of parks workers are hired, there will be fewer claims against the city, he said.
The Future of Parks
The candidates agreed on the need to speed up capital projects for parks, and complete them more cheaply.
Speaker Adams bemoaned the multi-million dollar expense to put up a park bathroom alone, which “would blow your mind.” She proposed “getting creative” about using available spaces to add to the city’s greenery, looking at “microparks,” vacant spaces and empty lots as “alternatives.”
Lander suggested a different planning process: “One good example at Parks of something that’s working is using expense dollars for pre-scoping so that you see what the project needs to cost up front, rather than allocating a giant amount of capital dollars before you even know what the project is.” He touted his work in the City Council creating a capital projects tracker, but said it must be used as an accountability tool to drive city government performance.
All agreed on the need for more prep to deal with the ravages of climate change. Lander highlighted something as simple as mechanics prepared to fix the trucks that clear catch basins, helping to reduce flooding. “We aren’t planting the trees that actually resist fires,” he said. “We aren’t deploying staff to make sure that we’re getting those areas ready.”
Adams and Blake focused on federal funds — including from FEMA — that President Donald Trump is moving to take away. “This is where those boxing gloves come on to fight Donald Trump,” Adams said. Blake suggested that in the face of federal funding cuts, “we should do the constitutional pushback of not sending our funds to DC.”
Quick Hits
All the contenders argued that their ideas or experience would make them the most effective leader on topics like parks. Stringer and Lander in particular pointed to the high-quality personnel in the organizations they have run, and touted specific work from their tenures as the city’s chief fiscal watchdog. Adams promised that she would “not be bringing in cronies” and said she wouldn’t need a manual to do high-level city work, given her responsibilities as Council speaker on budgetary and legislative issues. “Just move me from one side of City Hall to the other,” she said.
On the perennially thorny question of New York City’s lifeguard shortage, Adams, Blake, and Stringer expressed support for more access to swimming instruction to broaden the pipeline of interested and capable workers. “Can’t save lives if you can’t swim,” Blake quipped.
Myrie supports the in-process idea of a junior lifeguard corps; Lander has a plan for civil service reform to broaden the pool of eligible workers, including many already employed by the city; and Mamdani wants to entice lifeguards with higher wages: he’s calling for a $30 minimum wage in the city by 2030 and said lifeguards should make at least that.
None of the candidates think the Trump Organization should regain operation of Wollman Rink in Central Park. Other than Stringer, all the candidates support keeping the newly-minted role of chief public realm officer — the former comptroller said he does not like the “czar” system and the work of coordinating among City Hall and various agencies should be led by the mayor and deputy mayors.
All the candidates support creating a 300 mile trail system throughout the city’s forests and wetlands, as well as making more schoolyards publicly accessible after school hours. Predictably, their favorite parks were their local ones, across Brooklyn (Myrie and Lander both said Prospect Park), the Bronx (Blake said Van Cortlandt Park), Queens (Mamdani said Astoria Park) and Manhattan (Stringer said Marble Hill Park); Adams had to leave slightly early and did not participate in the lightning round of very short answers.
As the forum neared an end, laughter ensued when Mamdani took the first crack at answering the question of his go-to game at a playground. “I love swinging,” he said. Once the response to the unintended double entendre calmed down, Lander called for a resurgence of tetherball, Stringer said he likes rebounding for his kids to shoot hoops, Myrie said he was more of a slide person, and Blake said racketball.
[You can watch the full video of the forum here.]
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Mark Chiusano is a Senior Fellow in New York Law School’s Center for New York City and State Law and the author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.
