Who's supposed to clear ice from city parks?

After a few barren, weirdly-warm winters, most of us were pretty psyched to get a few inches of honest-to-god snow during the polar vortex earlier this month. But with the gift of snow comes the inevitable secondary scourge: icy, slippery sidewalks.

The Department of Sanitation has a clear and well-known policy on this: Homeowners and business owners have to clear snow in front of their buildings within a set number of hours or face a $250 fine, and snitching is both encouraged and productive. But what about the walkways in the city’s 2,000 parks, which are increasingly under-funded, and where shoveling is often poorly enforced?

A full two days after the end of this most recent “winter weather event,” and after DSNY announced it would start doling out fines, I took a walk in Bed-Stuy’s Saratoga Park, only to find all sidewalks near-uniformly covered in a thick layer of slick ice, dog owners and their dogs gingerly navigating over the slippage to get to the snow-covered grass. A walk in the park was now off-limits for all but the most able-bodied, and still dangerous for absolutely anyone.

I’d soon find out this was not a unique experience; a friend took a painful fall on black ice in Crown Heights’ Brower Park four full days after the snowfall ended, saying, “It really seems like it wasn’t salted at all, just some of the path melted in the sun.” (Cops of course were driving through the park at the time, if you need a little on-the-nose tableau of how your tax dollars are prioritized.)

Local reddit threads were filled with discussions of still-icy tracks and running paths along the East River and in McCarren Park a week after the storm, and similar discussions were happening around Astoria Park (where Redditors say snow clearance is a chronic annual problem). Last year, one user posted a photo of a snow-covered Hudson River Greenway days after local sidewalks had been cleared.

Anyway, you get the point: even in a city where residents heavily rely on public parks year-round and also famously get around on foot, clearing those parks and their walkways of dangerous ice conditions doesn’t exactly seem to be a high priority.

“The Parks Department is responsible for clearing snow and ice from walkways within city parks, and 311 service requests for snow and ice within parks are sent to the Parks Department,” a DSNY spokesperson told The Groove. There’s a specific 311 online form for reporting ice and other unsafe conditions in parks — we encourage you to use it. (The Parks Department was unable to provide comment by press time.)

A lot of this is most likely due to classic if disappointing inefficiencies; local snow plowing costs have been ballooning for decades, and the city has a habit of chronically under-budgeting for the process, The Post reported back in 2020.

Then there’s the actual Parks Department budget, which if you can believe it, has actually shrunk during the Adams administration, in spite of the mayor’s campaign trail promises to dedicate 1% of the city’s budget to our precious shared green spaces. (Unlike private property owners who fail to shovel or salt their sidewalks in a timely manner, city agencies like the Parks Department don’t face DSNY fines once they’re reported. Probably for the best budget-wise, but less encouraging if you’re wondering what their actual incentive is to clear the damn snow.)

If you’re sensing a lack of satisfying conclusion here, you’re entirely correct, but like many of the city’s nagging, chronic problems, you can comfort yourself with the evergreen knowledge: there’s a 311 form for that.