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[via Bloomberg.com: Opinion | Hillary Clinton Betrays Brooklyn at Grass Roots]:

In an expansive interview with the local papers at the Sunset Park Senior Center last month, Clinton explained her views. ``Public land should be public land,'' the Brooklyn Paper, a weekly, reported her as saying. ``If parks had to be self-sustaining, would anybody have ever built a park?'' Another paper reported Clinton as saying that ``by definition, a park should be enjoyed for recreation.''

Clinton said it was a ``a little disingenuous'' to build luxury condos, concluding, ``I think we can do better than that.''

She is running for re-election, and she had just finished reading the autobiography of a Kenyan Nobel Prize winner, the environmentalist Wangari Muta Maathai. Clinton said of Maathai that ``one of her great accomplishments was stopping luxury housing in Uhuru Park in Nairobi.''

[...]

.... within a few days, Clinton had adjusted. In a mid-August letter to Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corp., she wrote of the importance of a ``revenue stream'' for such parks, saying, ``I do not support legal action to oppose the park.'' The senator didn't give a reason for her transformation to Development Democrat, but pro-development officials were visibly lobbying her.

Ferrer:

(1) Ensure every dollar of the consession money goes back into the parks.

(2) Minimum staffing and maintenance standards
(3) Compeltely clear & transparent way for people to judge the city in its maintenance of its parks

"Lovely to have wifi but we first need the benches."

Fields
(1) Funding would be a priority .. that's why I signed the 1% pledge

(2) Planning, so that when decisions made about development, parks are on the table

Miller
(1) Reclaim bottom 50 parks

(2) $10 million for maitenance & $25MIL capital

(3) Enforce maintenance & make sure there's security

(4) Create relationships with private funding

Ognibene
(1) The first thing I would do is to rethink my position about community gardens

(2) I went to all the community organizations and the most important thing to do is to find out what they need and what they want and make sure they interact with the new parks commissioner ... there's no reason why every park has people's input

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.