Parks Commish Veronica White Lands Job With Bloomberg After Lobbying Efforts To Stay Failed

Park Commissioner Veronica White (center) flanked by Deputy Parks Commissioner (and former Bloomberg re-election political operative) Larry Scott Blackmon  (L) and First Deputy Commissioner for Parks Liam Kavanagh at a City Council Hearing in September 2013.  Mr. Kavanagh has been Acting Parks Commissioner since Ms. White's departure on December 31st.  (Photo: Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates)

"We have a great operating budget,"  Veronica White embarrassingly testified at the hearing.

City-Wide

Parks Commissioner Veronica White quietly left the agency on December 31 and landed a job at Bloomberg L.P. after lobbying efforts to stay on failed NYC Park Advocates has  learned. 

Sources say Ms. White had attempted to enlist the help of several prominent people including DC 37 head Lillian Roberts to lobby the new administration but those efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.

No public announcement was made regarding her departure and Ms. White did not send out a customary Broadcast email announcement to all parks employees. Instead she sent an email to upper management on Dec. 31st  thanking them and stating it was her last day according to several park employees.

Ms. White began her employment the following day on Jan. 1 at Bloomberg L. P. as chief of staff to Thomas Secunda, Vice Chairman & Global Head of Financial Products & Services, and a founding partner of Bloomberg L.P. 

"She was more of a figure head,"  said a long-time parks employee of White's sixteen month tenure, and speaking on the condition of condition of anonymity.  

"Liam's been running the agency since Adrian left," the employee said.

First Deputy Commissioner for Parks Liam Kavanagh has also been the Acting Parks Commissioner since Ms. White's departure. 

"We have a great operating budget,"  Veronica White embarrassingly testified In September,  a view consistently shared by Adrain Benepe who was fond of the calling the funding  "robust." 

Ms. White was out on sick leave for several months this spring. 

When her appointment was announced she called the position, "truly the most important and great job that I could ever hope to have."  

When asked what her top priorities and goals were she stressed the need to make sure that all parks in in all boroughs were maintained. 

"As we increase the parkland obviously we have to increase the resources available public and private - especially the private - for each of these parks we are creating as well as the existing parks," she said emphasizing the reliance on private funds.  

Former long-time Parks head Henry Stern complained about her lack of parks background  at the time and compared the situation to Schools Chancellor Catherine Black. 

Veronica applied for the Parks Commissioner job once before,  shortly after Mayor Bloomberg was elected in 2001. 

Before joining the Parks Department White worked for Bloomberg as the first executive director of the mayor's anti-poverty Center for Economic Opportunity a program he created in 2006 that reportedly used $100 million annually in public and private funds.

White is perhaps best known for her controversial anti-poverty ventures, including an initiative to pay poor people to attend parent-teacher conferences and a program to take kids to the dentist.

Ms. White began at Parks' on August 30, 2012 after the position was vacated by Adrain Benepe who held the job from February 4, 2002 to August 29, 2012.

Benepe finally wore out his welcome from the Bloomberg administration and was summarily told to find employment elsewhere according to several City sources.

Benepe landed a job at The Trust for Public Land,  a partner organization in the Mayor's PLANYC Schoolyards To Playgrounds Initiative.  

It is unclear if Mr. Benepe received a waiver from the Mayoral appointed Conflict of Interest Board before joining the organization.  

Bronx Park East Residents, CB's Slam City For Lack Of Parks Maintainence & Enforcement

Community Board 11 chairman Anthony Vitaliano cited the recent death of a Queens woman in Kissena Park as an example of what can happen when parks aren’t properly maintained.    Leaders from the Bronx Park East Community Association, Community Boards 10 and 11 fired off letters to Parks Commissioner Veronica White seeking infusion of maintenance workers, enforcement officers.
(Photo: NYC Park Adovcates) Click on Image to enlarge

The Parks Department refuses to say how many new hires will be assigned to the Bronx.   

Bronx

The Bronx may not be getting its fair share of workers to maintain the borough’s vast network of city-operated parks, or enforcement officers to police them, according to the New York Daily News. 

 So say residents of several leafy neighborhoods, who are up in arms over what they are calling a dangerous slight on the part of the city. 

Leaders from the Bronx Park East Community Association, Community Boards 10 and 11 all fired off letters to Parks Commissioner Veronica White over the past month demanding that the city ramp up staffing levels at parks throughout the Bronx.

 “The way I feel is that we are being short-changed,” said Anthony Vitaliano, the Chairman of Community Board 11. “This is potentially a very dangerous situation.”   

The Bronx contains more parkland than any other borough, roughly 25% of the city’s greenspace. 

District manager Kenneth Kearns of Community Board 10 in the east Bronx said he was told that only 30 to 40 new hires would be assigned to the borough.

 “With the amount of parkland in our neighborhoods, the community board believes they should be taken care of and adequately staffed,” Kearns said. 

A Parks Department spokesman said that of 414 recent hires, 207 were general parks workers, 81 Parks Enforcement Police officers, 96 maintenance workers and 30 climbers and pruners. The spokesman would not say how many of those would be assigned to the Bronx.   

“Staffing for each community board is determined by park usage and adjusted frequently according to park conditions,” the spokesman said. 

Vitaliano cited the recent death of a Queens woman in Kissena Park as an example of what can happen when parks aren’t properly maintained. 

“They don’t take care of the trees. They don’t trim them, and when it rains the branches are likely to come down,” the retired NYPD lieutenant said. 

Board 11 covers Morris Park, Van Nest, Pelham and Allerton.  

Pelham Parkway, a tree-covered thoroughfare that stretches across the neighborhoods, has been a frequent barbecue spot on weekends this summer, angering many residents that say the city has done nothing to curb the illegal cookouts. 

A Parks Department representative dismissed the claims that Bronx parks are dangerously understaffed. 

“Any assertion that Bronx parks receive less than their fair share of staffing, maintenance or funding is simply untrue,” the spokesman said. 

Parks in both Community Board 10 and 11 passed more than 94% of agency inspections performed this year, according to the city. 

“I think that they’ve been responsive,” a hopeful Kearns said of the city. “There are so many parks here, we just want them to be safe.” 

Vitaliano said he wasn’t as convinced that the Bronx would be adequately staffed. “Maybe Manhattan gets the priority,” he said. “But we should be getting more than what we are.”   

Read More:

Residents, community boards demand that city ramp up staffing at parks throughout the Bronx   

New York Daily News - August 7, 2013  - By Denus Slattery 

Parks Commissioner Says It's The City's Job To Take Care Of Parks Not The Public

City-Wide

By Geoffrey Croft

The city's new parks commissioner says it's the city's job to take of it's parks. 

This surprising admission comes after years of the Bloomberg administration claiming it can not afford to maintain the city's parks and touting the benefits of private benefactors and the hundreds of so called public-private partnerships and freinds-of-groups it has cultivated.   

 "In terms of disparities,  the City does not have the money to have new parks and fund them," Mayor Bloomberg stated in March 2010 at the opening of Brooklyn Bridge Park when asked to comment on the disparity between the level of maintenance and operation funds of municipally  funded parks and others as a result of private funding deals.

Parks Commissioner Veronica White's comments appeared in a New York Times article on Monday which follows our story from four months ago on the disparity created by private gifts to parks. 

The Times article however failed to mention it was the government's job and not private money that is supposed to take care of city parks.  In a strange turn of events it was the city's parks commissioner no less, who pointed that out. 

"'Still, she said,  the city was not going to make friends groups pay for routine maintenance. “Where we have trusts and alliances,  the goal is not to shift costs, ” Ms. White said. “Parks are paid for by the tax base,  and they should be,” the article stated.  

The Times published the commissioner's quote without pointing out the discrepancy of the administration and the forcing it's citizenry to pay for basic maintenance.  

The Times has repeatedly failed to question this issue and in fact has published numerous articles supporting the last few administrations' increased reliance on these so called public-private partnerships whereby the public is being required to pay extra for basic government services. Services that are traditionally and legally required to be payed for as specified under the City Charter.     

Last year, Central Park received what is believed to be the largest gift ever given to an American park, $100 million, from the hedge fund manager John A. Paulson.

When Frederick J. Kress, who sits on the board of the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Conservancy, heard about it, he had only one thought: What about us?, according to the New York Times. 

Flushing Meadows-Corona, which has been the setting for two World’s Fairs, is considerably larger than Central Park, at 1,225 acres, compared with 843. Last year, its conservancy attracted $5,000 in donations.

The park’s bicycle and walking paths are cracked and pitted, Mr. Kress said, and its natural areas are overgrown with invasive species. “Central Park is doing pretty well,” said Mr. Kress, who is also president of the Queens Coalition for Parks and Green Spaces, noting that though Mr. Paulson’s home on Fifth Avenue overlooks Central Park, he grew up in Queens. “I’m not saying he owes anyone anything, but how about you give Central Park $98 million and Flushing Meadows-Corona $2 million? That two million would have gone so much further in an underappreciated park.”

Mr. Paulson’s gift was only one of a number of large donations to the city’s parks: $20 million was given to the High Line in late 2011, an additional $10 million to Central Park this month, and $40 million was pledged to build a field house in Brooklyn Bridge Park, though the plan was abandoned. The gifts have put New York’s green spaces on a par with hospitals, universities and cultural institutions as objects of philanthropy.

The largess has delighted city officials, who say it will ensure that New York’s signature parks have the resources to remain pristine while accommodating millions of visitors a year. But the donations have also highlighted the disparity between parks in Manhattan’s high-rent districts and those, like Flushing Meadows-Corona or Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, that are in less affluent communities. In those parks, conservancies and friends groups must struggle to raise any money at all.

Christina Taylor is the executive director of Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, a nonprofit group devoted to the fourth-largest park in the city. Van Cortlandt, with 1,146 acres, is surrounded by middle- and working-class neighborhoods. A $1 million plan by Ms. Taylor’s group to overhaul the park’s trail system is about 20 percent complete but will soon come to a halt for lack of funds.

“It is frustrating, and it’s hard not to think, ‘Them again?’ ” she said, referring to Central Park. “We work very hard to do what we do. If we get a $50,000 grant, we’re jumping for joy.”

Friends of Morningside Park, a nonprofit group that solicits volunteers and donations for the Harlem park, does not begrudge Central Park its windfall. For one thing, the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that operates the park for the city, regularly dispatches its maintenance crews to nearby Morningside and a dozen other city parks, in its own act of altruism.

Brad W. Taylor, president of Friends of Morningside Park, has even seen a slight increase in contributions since the fall, when Mr. Paulson’s gift was announced. “Giving to parks has become a cool thing now,” Mr. Taylor said.

His worst fear, he said, is that the infusion of philanthropic dollars will result in less public financing for all parks. “That’s just a recipe for disaster,” he said, “especially in parks that cannot raise that kind of money.” The group has a wish list of modest capital projects that the city has yet to tackle, notably two bluestone staircases that are “falling apart,” as he put it, each requiring $1 million worth of work.

The big gifts have arrived as the total expense budget for parks, which includes maintenance, has fallen to $338 million, from $367 million in 2008. Nonetheless, under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, $3.9 billion has been invested in new and refurbished parks through the capital budget, and 750 acres of new parkland have been created.

Veronica M. White, the city’s parks commissioner, said the department was committed to financing the entire park system. She defended the sizable gifts, pointing out that Friends of the High Line, under its management agreement with the city, was responsible for that park’s maintenance. The Central Park Conservancy, at the same time, covers 85 percent of the annual operating budget for Central Park, through donations from residents, corporations and foundations.

In addition, both parks draw residents from across the city, and tourists from around the world. “To keep Central Park and the High Line at the level they are with only city money just would not happen,” Ms. White said.

Still, she said, the city was not going to make friends groups pay for routine maintenance. “Where we have trusts and alliances, the goal is not to shift costs,” Ms. White said. “Parks are paid for by the tax base, and they should be.”

The unequal distribution of philanthropy is not particularly surprising, said Linda R. Cox, the parks department’s Bronx River administrator, who also directs the Bronx River Alliance, a nonprofit group. After all, most major philanthropists tend to live near a few parks in the city’s most affluent neighborhoods, she said.

“We can’t kid ourselves that some parks and some projects aren’t going to come to the notice of really wealthy donors more easily than others,” she said. “That’s something that as a city we are going to need to reckon with over time.”

While praising the recent generosity toward parks, Holly M. Leicht, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, said she hoped that the city could devise ways to somehow share the wealth.

“Even though it’s great that there are individual gifts to individual parks, it’s a park system,” Ms. Leicht said. “That lends itself to having a broad-based fund or thinking creatively about funding.”

Mr. Taylor, of the Morningside Park organization, said the largest gift that the friends group had received in its 32 years was $10,000; a typical year yields about $50,000, which goes toward routine maintenance of the steeply sloping, 30-acre park.

But for many of the city’s parks, raising even $50,000 can seem an impossible dream.

Friends of Wingate Park, in Brooklyn, for example, recently won a grant from the Partnership for Parks, a joint program of the City Parks Foundation and the parks department, to help pay for materials to recruit volunteers and foster group identity. The amount: $800.

Read More:

New York Parks in Less Affluent Areas Lack Big Gifts

New York Times - February 17, 2013 -  By Lisa Foderaro  

Paulson’s $100 Million Park Gift Raises Fairness Question

Bloomberg News - By Henry Goldman & Martin Z. Braun - October 26, 2012

Comptroller Liu Investigating Ferry Point Park Golf Delays Cost Overruns

   

Comptroller John Liu is looking into why golf course city is building for Donald Trump is riddled with delays and huge cost overruns.  He is also looking into another Parks Consession, Tavern on the Green.   (Photo: Michael Schwartz for New York Daily News) 

Bronx

The city comptroller has begun looking at cost overruns and delays at the golf course the city is building for Donald Trump in the Bronx, the Daily News has learned. 

Last Thursday, Comptroller John Liu sent city Parks Commissioner Veronica White notice that he was reexamining the agency’s handling of the project, which is behind schedule and has ballooned in cost to at least $97 million from $22.5 million.

The move follows the Daily News’ revelations Sept. 23 that high levels of methane gas were found in June and July at the edge of the site, which used to be a landfill. 

City Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx) has summoned government officials to a meeting next week to explain what effects the gas could have on the surrounding neighborhood. 

Liu is reopening a 2007 audit by then-Comtroller William Thompson that found lax oversight by the Parks Department caused the city to lose $25 million in overpayments and potential earnings at the project. 

On Thursday, Liu informed Parks that the audit “will determine whether the Parks Department carried out or implemented recommendations” from that prior audit. 

The recommendations included tracking progress of the project against its start and completion dates, preparing an “itemized breakdown of all required activities” at the project and carefully monitoring all “invoices, canceled checks and other related documentation.” 

Parks spokeswoman Vickie Carp did not respond to requests for comment about whether the agency had implemented the 2007 recommendations. 

The Parks Department says the project is expected to cost the taxpayers $97 million, although The News found contracts assigned to the Ferry Point golf course totaling $120 million. 

Carp also would not comment on that finding. Trump has agreed to spend $10 million himself on a clubhouse, and he’s negotiated a 20-year lease. The links are expected to open in 2014.   

Read More:

Controller John Liu reexamining construction of golf course city is building for Donald Trump Project is behind schedule and has ballooned in cost from $22 million to nearly $100 million

New York Daily News - September 29, 2012-  By Greg B. Smith

High Levels Of Methane Gas Repeatedly Found At Ferry Point Golf Course

A Walk In The Park - September 23, 2012 

Bronx Residents Still Waiting For Ferry Point Park Golf Course

A Walk In The Park -  August 15, 2012

Golfweek - Inside The Ferry Point Park Project

A Walk In The Park - February 4, 2012 

Donald Trump In Sweetheart City Tax-Payer Funded Golf Concession Deal

A Walk In The Park - January 9, 2012  By Geoffrey Croft

Trump Picked To Run Ferry Point Park Golf Money Pit Boondoggle

A Walk In The Park - December 24, 2011 - By Geoffrey Croft