Funding for Trash Cans and Parks Restored

By C.G. Hoffman

The mayor of NYC has made an about-face on previously announced budget cuts, restoring the budgets for sanitation measures and the city’s parks.

This change of plans comes fast on the heels of a similar announcement made by the mayor regarding the restoration of funds to enable the retention of the “fifth firefighter” position for the FDNY and to l allow for the NYPD to add 600 new recruits in April, as reported by BoroPark24 here.

The proposed sanitation measures that were restored would have removed 9,000 trash cans and cut seasonal jobs for as many as 1,400 park staffers, as reported by BoroPark24 here. That decision has now been reversed by the mayor, perhaps in part due to another one of the mayor’s favorite causes: the war on rats.

“As a result of these restorations, New Yorkers will continue to see fewer rats,” Adams said Thursday.

Not only has the funding been restored for DSNY's litter basket service, but the 1,000 brand new litter baskets ordered by the city and dubbed the litter baskets of the future are also still in the works. The one million dollar expenditure for new garbage cans, designed by Group Project, cost $1,000 a piece and will replace the green wire mesh version, commonplace around New York City. 

“We will be able to maintain 23,000 litter baskets around our city and continue to install the litter basket of the future,” the mayor announced on Thursday.

The seasonal jobs for parks are part of a job program for low-income New Yorkers, and DC37, a municipal union, had sued the city over the planned cuts. The about-face also included the restoration of $37 million in funding to the city’s NYPD and FDNY, allowing the agencies to retain more staff.

The budget cuts, followed by the mayor’s decision to backtrack, aroused some controversy from some of the mayor’s most vocal critics, among them the teachers’ union, which had bristled at the announcement of anticipated cuts to the schools’ budgets. Adams has said that some budget cuts will be inevitable due to a $7 billion deficit tied to migrant spending and the end of federal pandemic aid.