To Fix Our Parks, Maybe a Surcharge on Mets Tickets?

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out about ideas to generate new revenue for city parks. We’ll also get details on a warning from the judge at Donald Trump’s defamation trial in Manhattan.

A surcharge of 50 cents or $1 on tickets at Citi Field and Arthur Ashe Stadium?

A “voluntary contribution” from hotel guests?

A “modest expansion” of concessions like restaurants and cafes in parks?

Those are three of 20 ideas that the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based think tank, said would be outside-the-budget ways to generate needed new revenue for city parks.

Every group that has an affinity for a particular municipal service or city agency argues for more money in the city budget. What sets the center’s report apart is its outside-the-budget thinking.

“Odds are there will never be enough city dollars to keep pace” with parks’ needs, Eli Dvorkin, the center’s editorial and policy director, told me. “We’ve reached a point where the problems have compounded over decades, so trying to dig out of the hole that the system is in presents a major long-term challenge.”

And with fiscal headwinds still swirling despite the less ominous forecast sketched out by Mayor Eric Adams, “I’m just being honest saying city dollars will never be enough,” Dvorkin said.

Even before announcing his $109 billion proposed budget on Tuesday, Adams had restored some funding for the police, fire and sanitation departments because of what he called “better-than-anticipated tax revenue.” He also dropped previously announced school budget cuts and put back money for a program run by the parks department and the Department of Social Services that puts low-income people in temporary jobs.

Still, Dvorkin said, “the park system has been under-resourced” for decades, “and with New Yorkers using parks more than ever before, the cracks are showing.”

Sometimes literally, he added, as when retaining walls give way and drainage systems fail.

“Too many parks and playgrounds experience flooding during an ordinary rainfall,” the report said, estimating that the park system needed $685 million worth of work “just to bring existing infrastructure up to a state of good repair.” Only 30 percent of those projects are underway or planned for the next three years, the report said.

Adam Ganser, the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy group, told me that philanthropic money had kept a few “marquee parks” like Central Park, Prospect Park and the High Line in “fantastic condition.”

But most New Yorkers are unaware that private money is going into those heavily used parks, he said — or that the 1,700 other parks are entirely dependent on the city budget and are lagging.

As for a surcharge on tickets, the report looked at venues like Citi Field, which paid the Parks Department $1.5 million in rental fees in fiscal 2022. Beyond that, the Parks Department receives no revenue from “what is technically parks property,” the report said. The report calculated that a 50-cent surcharge at Citi Field would bring in $1.29 million from Mets home games annually. At $1 a ticket, the surcharge would generate enough money for the Parks Department to hire more than 50 full-time gardeners, the report said.

As for expanding restaurants and cafes, the report noted that the Parks Department had only 12 restaurants in city parks, three of them in golf courses.

But those 12 do not include concessions that pay nonprofit groups like the Madison Square Park Conservancy, which manages the park. The Shake Shack in Madison Square Park generates more than $1 million a year for the conservancy, the report said, suggesting that the city arrange for 10 more restaurants in parks by 2030.

Sue Donoghue, the parks commissioner, said by email that the report had brought together “some of policy’s most innovative and conscientious thinkers” to explore ways to support our parks. She also said it “helps to highlight that New Yorkers love their parks and want them to thrive.”

Weather

It will be a mostly cloudy day in the low 30s. Prepare for a chance of snow later, with low temperatures in the upper 20s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until Feb. 9 (Lunar New Year’s Eve).

The latest New York news

• Sleeping in snow for a city-issued ID: About three dozen migrants spent the night in the 20-degree wind chill for a chance at a prize whose significance was not clear: an IDNYC.

• Hakim meets Hakeem: For most of his life, Hakim Jeffrey’s only connections to Representative Hakeem Jeffries were Brooklyn and their similar names. Then they crossed paths.

• Woman files federal lawsuit against James Dolan: She accused the entertainment and sports mogul of pressuring her into unwanted sex and then coordinating an encounter with Harvey Weinstein, whom she accused of sexual assault.

Arts & Culture

• “Stereophonic” will open on Broadway: The acclaimed behind-the-music play about a disputatious band recording a studio album will transfer to Broadway this spring.

• Broadway League president retires: In a surprise announcement, Charlotte St. Martin, who has led the league since 2006, will step down next month.

Judge threatens to eject Trump from Carroll trial

Donald Trump’s carping in court prompted an extraordinary exchange between one of his lawyers and the judge on the second day of the trial over a defamation lawsuit against Trump.

He sat at the defense table as E. Jean Carroll, who filed the suit, told the jury that Trump had wrecked her reputation and made her a target of some of his followers. She was testifying about what had happened after she first said publicly that he had raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.

As she testified, he shook his head. He let out his breath — loudly. He whispered to his lawyer. He muttered “con job” and “witch hunt.”

A lawyer for Carroll, out of the jury’s presence, complained that the jurors could hear him.

The judge, Lewis Kaplan, had already sparred with Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba over her objections to Carroll’s testimony. Now he appeared to be losing patience.

“Mr. Trump has a right to be present here,” the judge began, adding that Trump could forfeit that right “if he is disruptive, which is what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders.”

“I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial,” Judge Kaplan said. “I understand you are probably very eager for me to do that.”

Trump threw his hands up. “I would love it,” he said.

“I know you would,” the judge said, “because you just can’t control yourself in these circumstances.”

Trump has been on the attack against Carroll ever since she accused him of rape in a book excerpt that appeared in New York magazine in June 2019. She has since sued him twice. The jury in the first case that went to trial found him liable for sexually abusing her and awarded her just over $2 million in damages.

It also awarded her just under $3 million after finding that Trump had defamed her in a 2022 post on his Truth Social website in which he called her claim “a complete con job” and a hoax.

The current trial focuses on what damages, if any, he must pay her for defaming her earlier, shortly after the book excerpt appeared. She is asking for at least $10 million.

Trump posted on Truth Social as the proceedings continued on Wednesday, saying that he had done nothing wrong except defend himself against what he called a false accusation by Carroll.

“She was not damaged,” he wrote. “I am the one who was damaged.”

METROPOLITAN diary

Coq au Vin

Dear Diary:

When I was a graduate student at the New School in the mid-1970s, I temped as a typist from 9 to 5 to support myself. Dinner was usually something fast and cheap in between work and class.

One morning before work, I decided to try out a recipe for coq au vin that came with a slow cooker my parents had given me hoping that I would occasionally cook a decent dinner for myself.

As I loaded the chicken and vegetables into the pot, I realized I didn’t have any vin. Uh oh.

There was a liquor store around the corner, but I didn’t know how early it opened.

I rushed downstairs and rounded the corner onto Second Avenue.

“Back in five minutes,” a note on the door said.

I paced anxiously in front of the store as I waited for it to open. I was staring at the pavement when a cute little dog approached me and started to sniff my leg.

Letting my eyes travel up the leash, I was surprised to see the grinning face of the actress Peggy Cass.

“They’re never there when ya need ’em!” she said.

— Mari Marks

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.

Melissa Guerrero, Sofia Poznansky and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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