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“New York City deserves parks that are cared for by skilled Parks workers whose expertise and labor cannot be replaced by volunteers.”
The City’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget fails to meet advocates’ call for 1 percent of the city’s annual spending to be allocated to parks. Parks are a critical public good that provide public health benefits, but are routinely underfunded in New York City.
While the Parks Department manages 14 percent of the city’s land, including 14 miles of beaches, it received 0.57 percent of the city budget from 2001 to 2023. After decades of calls to action by advocates, union members, and elected officials, this year’s $125.8 billion dollar city budget provides just .56 percent for parks, or $709 million. Moving forward we must seek investment from the city budget as well as limit the reliance on volunteers to supplement park workers.
Other large U.S. cities allocate 2.5 to 7 times more of their budget to parks than New York City, such as San Francisco (1.6 percent), Los Angeles (2.9 percent), and Chicago (4.3 percent). The Office of NYC Comptroller Mark Levine states that New York City “historically treats parks like a discretionary agency competing for funds every year,” unlike other cities with dedicated funding streams.
Decades-long cuts to our Parks Department have reduced resources across the agency. There are fewer physical resources, like equipment to cut lawns and technology to optimize project management systems, as well as fewer human resources due to the hiring freeze, which has cut departments such as Park Enforcement Patrol, GreenThumb, and the Capital Office, as well as staffing issues outlined in the 2025 Speaker’s Report Card.
Since 2025, New York City has fallen seven places in Trust for the Public Land’s 2026 ParkScore, now at number 20. ParkScore ranks parks in the 100 largest U.S. cities, using metrics like accessibility, maintenance, and investment. Without critical investments in our parks, our city’s ecosystems will lose the biodiversity that supports plants, wildlife, and waterways, while the NYC Comptroller states that “maintenance gaps are undermining the health and longevity of the urban forest.”
Volunteers’ work represents 11 percent of the investments in our city parks, compared to an average of just 3 percent for ParkScore’s other top 20 cities. ParkScore shows that of every $247 that New York City invests per person in parks, only 77 percent comes from the Parks Department or other government agencies, while the rest is attributed to private organizations or work performed by volunteers.
Volunteers take on various roles that augment or replace work traditionally conducted by NYC Parks, and are one of the ways the agency manages its extensive park portfolio on a small budget. Since the 1990s, Parks has increased its focus on building volunteer programs, while city funding has fallen since 1970.
This includes members of grassroots “friends of” groups or corporate volunteers who support park workers, as well as the Citizen Pruners who care for street trees, fitness instructors who staff Shape Up NYC, and Super Stewards who work in wetlands, forest/meadows, tree care, and trail maintenance. All of this reflects a shift from Parks staff to a deeper reliance on volunteers. According to the 2017 book, Who Cleans the Park, “4,000 unionized civil-service workers once cleaned and maintained New York City’s parks,” a number that later dropped to 1,800 workers who share tasks with volunteers, nonprofit parks staff, and Park Opportunity Program participants.
This past spring, plans released by NYC Parks and its partners showed that volunteers are expected to contribute even more. Volunteers are intertwined in Vital Parks for All, NYC Parks’ dashboard to highlight the benefits and needs for our parks, and the Urban Forest Plan, created by NYC Parks and nonprofit park organizations and mandated by Local Law 148 of 2023.
Vital Parks has a map of the city’s volunteer “Friends” groups at the bottom of the main webpage to encourage New Yorkers to connect directly with them. In order to expand New York City’s tree canopy from 22 percent to 30 percent by 2035, the Urban Forest Plan contains a number of proposals to train more volunteers to care for trees, including a focus on increasing stewardship in environmental justice areas.
As those plans reflect the growing push for more New Yorkers to volunteer for parks, the agency must first improve its support for, and communications with, its existing volunteers. NYC Parks is no longer sharing its equipment with nonprofits for free community events, including collaborative events with volunteer-run park “Friends” groups. NYC Parks’ official talking points and staff discussion during a winter 2026 meeting with volunteers cite new restrictions, budget limits, and equity policies that aim to reduce strain on the agency, reduce its liability for incidents, and create a fairer distribution of equipment.
The new policy restricts equipment usage to only agency partners, elected officials, or community boards. Volunteer groups have been left to scramble for tables, tents, storage space, and funds to pay private staging companies for free summer concerts. Additionally, volunteer stewards’ plantings have been removed by parks on numerous occasions due to seasonal workers’ lack of training and/or supervision.
It is time for state and federal elected officials to invest in our parks. If we learn from our fellow large cities, state and federal funding should be provided for New York City’s unique coastlines, historic harbors, and green spaces. Congressman Tom Souzzi did this for our region by ushering in a 1000 percent increase in funding for the Long Island Sound Geographic Program, “from $4 million in 2016 to its [June 2026] level of $40 million,” with funding going to projects like wetland restoration surrounding the Sound.
Volunteer stewardship has been an important part of NYC Parks for decades, and volunteer experiences should be improved before being expanded. One way is the planned “Citywide Parks Network” initiative, which will bring together volunteers with agency and nonprofit park leaders. Additionally, a 2024 report by NYC Service found that volunteering has dropped 7 percent since COVID-19.
While parks volunteer data in the Preliminary Mayor’s Management Reports is promising, it reflects numerous types of volunteerism, ranging from civic organizations that host annual cleanups to City Parks Foundation’s corporate volunteer program. A 2025 Forbes article found that corporate volunteering is on the rise; however, it was not included as an avenue to explore in the Urban Forest Plan.
Instead of focusing only on city funding or getting more New Yorkers to volunteer, our elected officials and nonprofit park leaders must look for additional ways to invest in this critical public utility, just as other U.S. cities have.
While New York City must provide more funding for parks, advocates should also pursue greater collaboration among city agencies and seek funding from state and federal government sources. A dedicated city funding stream should be complemented by sustained state and federal investment that recognizes the environmental, economic, and cultural value our city’s parks provide to residents and visitors alike.
New York City deserves parks that are cared for by skilled Parks workers whose expertise and labor cannot be replaced by volunteers.
Jessica Burke is a member of Community Board 11 in Queens and founding president of the grassroots volunteer organization Friends of Crocheron & John Golden Park.