City Must Adequately Fund Parks and Public Space as Part of the FY26 Budget

Testimony Submitted to the City Council Committee on Parks and Recreation

Date: March 20, 2025

The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) has continually advocated to ensure that New York City’s public realm is designed equitably and holistically to meet the needs of New Yorkers across all five boroughs.

The City must fund parks and open spaces as public infrastructure to ensure that they can be useable, maintained, and safe. Sufficient funding is needed to begin to address the growing public realm inequities that have been worsened by decades of underfunding to the Department of Parks & Recreation (NYC Parks). The recent announcement for the City of Yes for Families initiative, which will encourage the creation of more public spaces, makes this funding even more important. Further, a functional and resilient system of parks and open spaces is critical in improving health outcomes and in our city’s fight to address climate change, including lowering emissions and mitigating flooding and the heat island effect.

The proposed funding in the Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) Preliminary Budget cannot adequately provide the maintenance and care needed for our city’s 30,000 acres of parkland and the expansion of tree canopy. We support our partners at the Play Fair for Parks and Forest for All NYC coalitions and their demands to allocate more funding to NYC Parks as part of the FY26 City Budget.