Merritt Birnbaum, President & CEO of Riverside Park Conservancy
Public Hearing Testimony before the NYC Council Committee on Parks & Recreation
March 20, 2025
Thank you, Councilmember Krishnan, for holding this hearing, and for your tireless advocacy on behalf of our City’s parks.
My name is Merritt Birnbaum, and I’m the President & CEO of Riverside Park Conservancy. We work in partnership with NYC Parks to help care for 400 acres of public parkland spread across 6 miles, from West 59th to West 181st Street in Manhattan.
You’ve heard from everyone today about our coalition’s asks for this budget:
We are asking for PEOPLE. We are asking for Parkies.
We are not asking for overhead or expensive equipment, or even pay raises.
We are just asking that you put back funding for the jobs that the City funded in the past, so that our parks can be clean and green and safe.
We want 795 good union jobs back.
And we want to baseline them, so we can stop fighting for these jobs every year, and so that these hard-working New Yorkers will know that they’re not expendable — and that they can support themselves and their families this year, and next year, and the year after that.
Today, I want to share real stories from one of the largest public parks in the system, a district that serves millions of New Yorkers each year, from midtown to West Harlem to Washington Heights.
Our district is fortunate to have a Conservancy that contributes several million dollars every year toward its maintenance and operations, through our agreement with NYC Parks. Our struggles are real, but they are nothing compared to the emergencies faced by smaller parks with even fewer resources.
In each example, you’ll see a system strained to the breaking point, being propped up by extraordinary workers, advocates, and partners like our fellow Play Fair Coalition members who are all doing our best to keep our Parks alive. We are all tired. We are all frustrated. And we are all here because we know that this kind of short-sighted budget austerity CANNOT continue.
- A Riverside City Parks Worker in West Harlem was moved to tears recently describing what it was like to be the only City worker responsible for snow removal in her section, on a Sunday morning at 5am, with dozens of staircases and pathways to be cleared. Conservancy staff and volunteers rallied to support her, and together they got the job done. But there are so many times when outside help is not possible – and so many parks where it is never available.
- Later that same Sunday, as local families were sledding and building snowmen, they tried to access the bathroom at one of our playgrounds, only to find that it was locked at 2:45pm – because there was no City Parks worker to staff it. We see this happening more and more frequently. To keep a playground bathroom open and maintained 7 days a week you need at least two full time workers. There is nowhere near enough staff at the agency to ensure people have reliable access to the most basic of services in our parks.
- Last summer, all of the NYC-Parks lawn mowers in our park failed at the same time. Mechanical failures with mowers are common, but to have them all go at the same time is a catastrophe for a 400-acre park. The Conservancy authorized emergency funding to buy new parts, because the Parks Department’s repair shop is so understaffed that repairing the mowers would have taken weeks, if not months. Meanwhile the grass doesn’t stop growing.
These are just three examples in just one Park of the ways that our City is failing to provide the bare minimum of what it takes to keep a Park clean and green and safe.
So, I’ll close with a question:
At a time when our City is losing population at the highest rate in decades…
At a time when we should be focused on making the City more livable…
At a time when we need stable union jobs to support working families…
At a time when our very existence is threatened by environmental degradation and climate change…
Why are we not providing the bare minimum of funding for our City parks?
This is so easy. Parks power New York City – it’s time to invest our City’s Budget in powering our parks.