Parks commissioner defends FY27 plan as council presses on staffing, restrooms and tree care

Trisha Shimamura, commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, gave a broad overview of the agency’s responsibilities and the FY27 preliminary plan at a council parks committee hearing, and defended the administration’s priorities while answering sustained line-by-line questions from council members.

Shimamura told the committee the administration’s 10-year capital plan allocates $12 billion to park projects and the FY27 preliminary operating budget for the agency is $654 million. She said the $33.7 million decrease from the FY26 adopted budget largely reflects the routine expiration of one-year “oneshot” items — funding lines the council and administration negotiate annually — not permanent base reductions. “Our park spaces are free and open to all New Yorkers,” Shimamura said in the hearing, emphasizing the agency’s role across 30,000 acres, thousands of trees and hundreds of built assets.

Council members pressed the commissioner about line items they said affect day-to-day services: lifeguard recruitment, public restrooms, tree pruning and the fate of operations lines currently funded by oneshots. Shimamura highlighted recent recruitment work — including a state lifeguard-recruitment grant and higher lifeguard wages and retention bonuses — and said roughly 1,082 lifeguards served last year while officials train new hires through the spring. She described pilots to lower restroom costs (single-stall Portland loo pilots; prefabricated modular restrooms) and confirmed a typical new-construction restroom budget runs roughly $3–5 million, with reconstruction often starting at $2.5 million.

The commissioner and deputy commissioners laid out the agency’s reliance on a mix of baseline positions and supplemental oneshot lines. Shimamura listed six FY26 oneshot bundles — forestry/natural areas, rangers, green-thumb support, maintenance, PEP enforcement officers and stump removal — that together account for several hundred positions the agency has relied on in recent years. “We rely on the support of our elected officials, our partners and friends groups… and the individual New Yorkers who use our parks every day,” she said. Council members repeatedly urged converting vital oneshot-funded positions into baseline lines to avoid recurring annual uncertainty for park workers and to preserve institutional knowledge.

On forest and natural-area management, Parks staff described a pattern council members flagged earlier: the city has sometimes funded forestry work on a oneshot basis (years listed in testimony going back to FY20–FY24), creating periodic staffing gaps. Officials said FY25 funding for the forest management framework lapsed, forcing some staff to shift to grants or leave the agency; advocates and the Natural Areas Conservancy asked the council to baseline funding for staff that care for more than 12,000 acres of natural landscapes. Shimamura said the agency will continue to push implementation of the soon-to-be-published urban forest plan — a datadriven effort to expand canopy equitably — but noted it cannot be executed without sustained staffing.

Where the budget goes next: council members and Parks officials agreed the preliminary budget starts a negotiation. Council leaders and advocates asked to restore or baseline the roughly 276 park positions funded by annual oneshots, argued for restoration to reach a 1%-of-city-budget target for parks, and urged targeted capital-to-maintenance funding so newly built rec centers, restrooms and playgrounds remain useable.

What comes next: the Parks committee will continue oversight and the council will use the executive budget process to press for restorations and to consider baselining of critical positions. Shimamura said the agency will follow up on specific requests such as park-by-park staffing clarifications, lifeguard vacancy tracking, restroom project costs and timelines, and the status of the forest-management oneshot funding.