Trash was strewn over MacDonald Park in Forest Hills last year. Volunteers picked up bags of trash to keep it clean. Council Member Shekar Krishnan argues that this will be a more common scene given budget cuts
QNS file photo
Trash cans will overflow and park jobs will be lost as a result of Mayor Eric Adams’ budget cuts that were announced in November, a Queens council member warned Monday.
Council Member Shekar Krishnan, who represents Jackson Heights and is Chair of the Committee on Parks and Recreation, said Monday that the mayor’s budget cuts that recently went into effect will result in parks being cleaned just once or twice a week—instead of five times weekly—and that the city’s parks will become dirty and less attractive. The Parks Dept. along with all other city agencies had its budget slashed 5% by the mayor last month.
Furthermore, he said, the cuts will result in the elimination of the Parks Opportunity Program, which employs 2,000 low-income New Yorkers as Parks Dept. maintenance workers. The workers are also provided with career coaching services to help them reach their future career goals.
“The mayor’s elimination of the Parks Opportunity Program from the budget tells us everything we need to know about his bleak, short-sighted, self-defeating vision for our city,” Krishnan said.
He added that the Parks Opportunity Program is a decades old job training initiative, and that the elimination of the program will affect the lives of many New Yorkers.
“The Parks Opportunity Program doesn’t just keep our parks clean, it also employs low-income New Yorkers every year, for whom it has been a ray of hope in an increasingly unaffordable city,” he added.
Currently, park workers empty 17,000 trash cans in parks across the city and with the loss of many jobs, these will soon be overflowing with trash.
“Cutting it will save the city pennies in a budget of billions. Parks will be cleaned only once per week, instead of…
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