Morano asks how many park days are lost to events
Morano asks Parks to track total park days lost to setup, event, breakdown, and restoration. Cerrone says Parks tracks event dates but not full displacement, notes that only portions of parks are usually closed, and says 75% of permits are for 100 people or fewer.
In that vein, the...
Committee's briefing says that parks considers not just the event itself, but preparation and cleanup time when determining the impact on ordinary park users.
So here's a number that I would really like to know, and I think you probably do have access to.
How many park days?
Do New Yorkers lose every year to special events?
And by park days, I mean the entire period when the public can't fully use that space, the setup, the event itself, breakdown, and restoration.
Do you track that?
And if not, I think we should.
Yeah, that's another good question.
We track the events, so we know when the event starts and when the event ends.
If it's a smaller event, there's probably not going to be much set up for a birthday party or things of that nature.
If it's a larger event that involves bringing infrastructure into the park, then we will track it.
I think where it might get a little bit tricky, but, Councilmember, not that we couldn't start to kind of figure something out, is...
Oftentimes, it's not the entire park that is being taken off offline.
It's just a portion of the park.
But I also just want to mention, you know, in the testimony, apologies, I didn't really get into the specifics, but
just for reference, and we have found that this tends to hold true over the years, 75% of the permits that we process are going to be for 100 people or less.
95% of them are going to be for 500 people or less.
And even though 500 people, it's not like a tiny amount of people or a little bit less than that, you know, those are events that we have generally found are going to be less impactful on the experience of other park users.
But not to say that that can't happen.
And also to your very good point, not to say that that couldn't happen with an athletic field or those permits.
But I just want to stress we are ready and...
and willing to work with you, your team, and any constituents if they have concerns about being displaced.
Because as much as humanly possible, we want a system that works for everybody.