Fiscal Year 2020 Annual Report on Park Maintenance Is Unique Among Previous Years’ Reports
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Annual Report on Park Maintenance Fiscal Year 2020 City of New York Parks & Recreation Bill de Blasio, Mayor Mitchell J. Silver, FAICP, Commissioner Annual Report on Park Maintenance Fiscal Year 2020 Table of Contents A Note on COVID-19 ............................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 Understanding Park Maintenance Needs ............................................................................... 2 How Parks are Maintained ...................................................................................................... 2 About the Data Used in this Report ....................................................................................... 4 Data Caveats .......................................................................................................................... 5 Report Column Definitions and Calculations ........................................................................... 6 Tables ...................................................................................................................................... Table 1 – Park-Level Services ............................................................................................ 9 Table 2 – Sector-Level Services ...................................................................................... 101 Table 3 – Borough and Citywide Work Orders ................................................................. 102 Table 4 – Borough and Citywide-Level Services Not Captured in Work Orders ............... 103 Table 5 – Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) Staffing ........................................................ 104 Appendices .............................................................................................................................. Appendix A: Fixed Post Calculation ................................................................................. 105 Appendix B: Park Cleaning Crews Calculations ............................................................... 105 Appendix C: Sector-Level Services .................................................................................. 107 Appendix D: Specialized Maintenance Costs .................................................................. 109 Appendix E: Borough and Citywide-Level Services ......................................................... 109 Cover Photo: Mosholu Parkway, The Bronx Photo Credit: Malcolm Pinckney/NYC Parks A Note on COVID-19 In light of the seismic impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Fiscal Year 2020 Annual Report on Park Maintenance is unique among previous years’ reports. During the spring and summer of 2020, NYC Parks implemented significant reductions for the agency, largely reflecting the existing health and safety concerns and economic results of the Coronavirus outbreak. Notable among these reductions was the cancellation of the hiring of 1,700 seasonal Maintenance & Operations (M&O) workers who are normally brought on each summer to work on Borough M&O crews, to clean parks, and to attend to other horticultural and maintenance duties. With safety in mind, Parks leapt into action to temporarily close most of its athletic facilities, playgrounds, skate parks, recreation centers, and other amenities from early spring to mid-summer to help support social distancing protocols. During the same timeframe, Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) and our Urban Park Rangers focused patrol efforts on social distance education, mask distribution, and trespassing enforcement once assets were closed. Parks was able to dedicate some Public Programs staff to the cause, who served as social distance ambassadors to educate the public and to distribute masks. When those staff transitioned back to providing outdoor public programming, Parks hired and trained 400 additional seasonal staff to serve as social distance ambassadors at beaches and parks for the summer season. While restrictions to amenities and activities are challenging for Parks and its patrons, Parks is dedicated to supporting the health and safety of New Yorkers. The purpose of the Annual Report on Park Maintenance is to provide the public with a better and transparent understanding of how Parks operates and deploys its resources across New York City. As such, the Fiscal Year 2020 Annual Report on Park Maintenance necessarily reflects the impacts of Coronavirus on Parks and our diminished operational capacities relative to previous years’ reports. Regardless of agency challenges, Parks remains committed to presenting this report and agency data to its patrons. Introduction NYC Parks is the steward of more than 30,000 acres of land, or 14% of the City. We are responsible for the construction, maintenance, and programming of public parks under our jurisdiction. In order to fulfill our mandate, we employ landscape architects, architects, and engineers who design parks and recreational amenities; forestry staff who plant and care for trees both in parks and on sidewalks; gardeners who grow and plant flowers and shrubs; recreation professionals who organize programming to help New Yorkers keep fit and have fun; park rangers and enforcement officers who teach the public about the natural world and uphold park rules; events professionals who bring cultural and sporting events to our parks; and outreach staff who engage volunteers and non-profit partners in improving their parks. This report does not include all of the work above, but focuses on our efforts to keep our parks clean and safe. This fundamental maintenance work is completed by park workers and supervisors who are responsible for day-to-day park cleaning, and specialized crews and tradespeople who maintain and repair park infrastructure. Release of this maintenance report accompanies a larger effort to provide the public a better understanding of how their parks are run, and to engage with them on improving how NYC Parks operates. Indeed, increased transparency has already yielded significant benefits for both New Yorkers and their parks. In 2014, Parks launched an online tracker for park capital improvement projects, allowing anyone to chart project progress from initial design through construction completion. In 2016, 1 Parks released the data from our decennial tree census and collaborated with volunteers from New York City’s civic technology and tree stewardship communities to use this data to better manage the urban forest, in what was Parks’ first open data hackathon – the TreesCount! Data Jam. In 2017, we led the City’s first “Open Data for All” Workshops, teaching members of the public how to access, interact with and analyze our data; and began an internal effort to define, document, and publish all Parks data sets online. We continue to increase the volume and quality of our datasets, and we hope this report and data release can be another means of engaging with New Yorkers about their parks and improve public understanding of park maintenance. Understanding Park Maintenance Needs It is important to understand that this report provides a summary of maintenance labor inputs, and not any measure of the result or outcome of this labor. Some parks receive far more cleaning time than others, while some have many more work orders written for repairs. This is by design, and a result of the unique characteristics, amenities, and usage in each park. Although parks of similar size and amenities will generally have comparable costs of service, these costs can also vary considerably, even among superficially comparable parks. A lawn that is a frequent host of barbecues will require different care from lawns that are used for concerts, picnics, or meditation. The maintenance demands of an acre of softball fields are very different from an acre of basketball courts, or soccer fields, or hiking trails. A park near the water will probably require more frequent painting. Playgrounds near a busy elementary school will require more frequent repair, and those repairs will likely be with more expensive, sturdier parts. These examples are just a few of the many factors that will affect the amount of hours and dollars spent cleaning and maintaining a site. With these distinctions in mind, we do not aim for identical inputs of time and money, but equitable outcomes: clean, safe, and welcoming parks for all New Yorkers to enjoy. The amount of cleaning and maintenance a park receives is historically based on the on-the-ground knowledge of our staff, which represents decades of experience informed by daily observations made while parks are inspected, cleaned, and repaired. We also supplement this institutional knowledge with quantitative data-driven models. Parks is piloting efforts to better understand the relationship between usage and amenities, and exploring ways to passively measure park usage using infrared sensors and mobile device GPS counts. In aggregate, these efforts represent Parks’ commitment to leverage data to better understand our maintenance needs and to improve how we care for public spaces. How Parks are Maintained An individual park will receive a variety of maintenance services from a variety of Parks staff. Parks are grouped together within park districts, which generally align with community boards. One or more park districts are combined into sectors that share resources for daily maintenance. Some of the largest parks, such as Van