HELL GATE—November 14, 2024—At the end of the bruising fiscal year 2024 budget negotiations with the City Council, Eric Adams was proud to announce that he’d undone much of the cuts he’d imposed on City agencies. And while libraries could once again reopen on weekends, and schools wouldn’t have to make devastating cuts, one agency was notably left out of the restorations—the Parks Department.

The Parks Department’s funding was trimmed by $20 million in that budget, which went into effect on July 1, 2024, and as a result, the agency lost 768 full-time workers, part of a trend of stagnant Parks funding that dates back to the de Blasio administration. Part of those cuts? Fifty-one members of the department’s Natural Resources Group, which is made up of forestry specialists whose job it is to help maintain New York City’s urban forests, keeping them healthy by removing the dead trees and invasive species that are most likely to ignite during periods of dry weather.

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