In this report, CBC addresses six challenges that prevent New York City from making the most of its parks:

1. Greater incentives are needed to pursue earned revenues, primarily from concessions;
2. No comprehensive, strategic plan guides expansion of the parks network;
3. All parks are not kept in acceptable condition, and parks in poorer neighborhoods are more likely to be in worse condition than parks in wealthier neighborhoods;
4. The DPR has no objective measures of park use and the efficiency of delivering park services;
5. Borrowed funds are used for routine repairs and replacements, creating incentives to limit preventive maintenance and to replace equipment and facilities more rapidly than might otherwise be necessary; and
6. The multiple, new arrangements with nonprofit partner organizations that help manage the parks have not been made fully transparent and have not been established in accord with consistent guidelines for how to encourage philanthropy, how to divide responsibilities between DPR and its partners, and how to divide concession revenues between the City and its partners.