City parks making do with part-time crews

More than threequarters of all parks in the Big Apple are operating without permanent staffers — even during the busiest summer months, a top city official said Friday.

Parks Department First Deputy Commissioner Liam Kavanagh told a City Council committee that a mere 23 percent of parks have designated maintenance workers during the summer.

In winter, the situation is even worse — with only 18 percent regularly staffed.

The rest of the parks, he said, rely on the cashstrapped department’s mobile units that travel from one green space to another to try to cover a 29,000acre system with 1,941 parks and playgrounds.

Many of these overlooked parks are in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, according to park advocates.

Kavanagh delivered the grim numbers to the Council Parks Committee while saying that the agency is ready to support a bill requiring that it provide data every year on where resources are going on a parkbypark basis.

“It’s all about figuring out the fairest way to distribute resources,” said Councilman Mark Levine (DManhattan). “Right now, we are flying blind.”

Levine also said he would share the information with the public.

The bill, which is also backed by the watchdog group New Yorkers for Parks, would also require the city to regularly post updated information online about the Parks Department’s capital projects.

Over the past decade, the city has added 750 acres of park land through $3.9 billion in capital spending, including large destination parks like the High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson River Park.

Many of those signature parks routinely solicit large donations through wellheeled conservancies, which some park advocates allege widens the divide between parks in affluent and lowincome neighborhoods.

The bill does not address private donations.

But Levine and Councilman Brad Lander (DBrooklyn), the sponsor, said the legislation would help track whether city funds are being distributed equitably.

“People have the [wrong] idea that all of the parks are getting an equal amount of money, almost like a peracre issue, and that [any private] conservancy money would be coming in on top of that,” Lander said.