Leave No Park Behind
This morning's New York Times reminds us our neighborhoods need help. And that the Bloomberg Administration is unbearably out of touch with many of the city's neighborhoods most in need.
A Times reporter followed up on the "Report Card on Parks" which gave failing grades to too many NYC Parks by going to those in-need parks where he found crack-smoking prostitutes, drugs dealers, piles of trash and homeless camps which had been there for 13 years.
And Bloomberg Administration's response?
"Just because something is in our inventory doesn't mean it's worth taking care of."--Adrian Benepe, Parks Commissioner
This is what the Bloomberg Administration believes!?
"Let nature take its course," Adrian Benepe said on behalf of Mayor Bloomberg. "Trees are growing, insects are buzzing, oxygen is being produced, and there's nothing wrong with that," he said.
From the Times article:
One of the park's residents is a heroin addict and prostitute who would give her name only as Joanne. Her makeshift house has a bed and a nightstand. She said she had lived there for 13 years. Men smoked crack cocaine a few feet from where a youth baseball game was being played.
--New York Times
It is not the job of 'Nature taking its course' to maintain the City's parks - it is the job of Government, specifically the Parks Department.
Ceding sections of our neighborhoods to Drug Dealers, Prostitutes, Violent Criminals and Crack is NOT acceptable.
More on the flip.
"This is a big system and you can't address every little problem," Benepe said. "The challenge is how to spend all the money we've been given."
Um. Actual advocates for Parks (not apologists for irresponsible Republican administrations) believe that with better funding and better management, those parks which used to be beautiful can be beautiful once again.
Return Parkies to the parks, hire more landscapers - clean the parks, don't write them off. Otherwise those little problems Benepe would like to ignore will become entire neighborhoods in the Bronx, Harlem, Flatbush, and Flushing.
The man gets paid $162,800 to do the opposite of his job.
On Benepe's About-Face
He used to be an advocate for parks, before he got the job of Parks Commissioner.
In Newsday May 29, 1992 Adrian Benepe himself wrote this:
"A visit to any neighborhood park can provide a snapshot of the destruction wrought by the forced neglect. Bureaucratic jargon speaks of "diminished headcount." In fact, there are fewer than 3,300 parks workers now -the fewest in the history of the city's park system- to run a system that required nearly 5,000 three years go, and had almost 7,000 during the 1960s...The true meaning of these cuts is frightening."
Since becoming Commissioner, Benepe has further cut staff from the "frightening" 3,300 to a "disgraceful" 1,353.
To quote from Benepe, the Park Advocate turned Anti-Park Advocate:
"The bleeding of the park system means more than simply a dirtier, less hospitable place for kids to play. It stikes at the heart of what meakes this city livable. Police, sanitation, sewers and fire-fighting make it possible for citizens to function in this city; decent parks make it possible for them to endure all the other things that make urban life hard."
In 1992 Benepe called for the Parks Department to get 1.5% of the city budget: "Only about a penny-and-a-half out of every tax dollar [would] provide a healthy base for parks, museums, botanical gardens and zoos -- currently they receive less than one penny!"
Thirteen years later, and Benepe in charge, and the parks NOW recieve less than one half of one penny. And yet, in 2005 he claims, "The challenge is how to spend all the money we've been given."
Really.