This morning's
New York Times reminds us our neighborhoods need help. And that the Bloomberg Administration is unbearably out of touch with many of the city's neighborhoods most in need.
A Times reporter followed up on the
"Report Card on Parks" which gave failing grades to too many NYC Parks by going to those in-need parks where he found crack-smoking prostitutes, drugs dealers, piles of trash and homeless camps which had been there for 13 years.
And Bloomberg Administration's response?
"Just because something is in our inventory doesn't mean it's worth taking care of."--Adrian Benepe, Parks Commissioner
This is what the Bloomberg Administration believes!?
"Let nature take its course," Adrian Benepe said on behalf of Mayor Bloomberg. "Trees are growing, insects are buzzing, oxygen is being produced, and there's nothing wrong with that," he said.
Nature's course
From
the Times article:
One of the park's residents is a heroin addict and prostitute who would give her name only as Joanne. Her makeshift house has a bed and a nightstand. She said she had lived there for 13 years. Men smoked crack cocaine a few feet from where a youth baseball game was being played.
--New York Times
It is not the job of 'Nature taking its course' to maintain the City's parks - it is the job of Government, specifically the Parks Department.
Ceding sections of our neighborhoods to Drug Dealers, Prostitutes, Violent Criminals and Crack is NOT acceptable.
More on the flip.
"This is a big system and you can't address every little problem," Benepe said. "The challenge is how to spend all the money we've been given."
Um.
Actual advocates for Parks (not apologists for irresponsible Republican administrations) believe that with better funding and better management, those parks which used to be beautiful can be beautiful once again.
Return Parkies to the parks, hire more landscapers - clean the parks, don't write them off. Otherwise those little problems Benepe would like to ignore will become entire neighborhoods in the Bronx, Harlem, Flatbush, and Flushing.
The man gets paid $162,800 to do the opposite of his job.
