Audit confirms delays plague Bronx parks

The city fell short of a promise it made to the Bronx almost a decade ago, according to the long-awaited audit released last week by Comptroller John Liu.

While digging into Parks Department capital projects, the comptroller’s office decided to initiate a separate audit of projects being constructed in the Bronx in exchange for building the massive Croton Water Filtration Plant underground in Van Cortlandt Park.

“The audit found that the Department is not always carrying out and overseeing the required capital improvements on time and within budgeted amounts,” Mr. Liu writes in the audit.

The comptroller’s office determined that a majority of the projects promised to the Bronx in a 2004 Memorandum of Understanding were delayed; that the city wasted $7.8 million on additional project costs; and that not all of the promised money had been expended. 

The reason for the delays range from permits not being obtained in a timely fashion to design problems or inclement weather. As part of the 2004 MOU, however, all of the projects — to total $186 million — were to be completed within five years, or by September 28, 2009.

Any local parkgoer knows that didn’t happen.

Deputy Comptroller Tina Kim determined that as of April, the city started work on 65 of the promised 67 projects, but that only 46 projects were complete. Of those completed projects, 83 percent of them were not completed within the Parks Department’s scheduled timeframe. As of April, the comptroller’s office determined that $146.6 million of the $186 million promised had been spent.

But in the past two years, things have looked better for Riverdale and Kingsbridge residents. After a series of mind-boggling delays, the fences around the Parade Ground came down last year, giving the community lush, green fields to play cricket and soccer on. Earlier this year, the $1.5 million renovation of the comfort station in Vannie was completed. Recently, Parks began constructing a jogging path that will run about halfway around the Jerome Park Reservoir, as well as a much-needed renovation of Fort Independence Park.

In response to the audit’s recommendation that projects be carried out “expeditiously,” the Parks Department writes, “We will continue to ensure that all eligible projects are carried out as expeditiously as possible. Of the six projects currently in construction, three are scheduled for completion this year.”

Though the audit confirms the criticism from many local activists and elected officials, it does not answer one crucial question that many in the community, including The Riverdale Press, have been asking for years: Did the city reduce regular capital funding for Bronx parks as Croton mitigation money kicked in?

The Press wrote a story in 2011 analyzing data from the Independent Budget Office showing that may be the case. 

Since Croton money kicked in and not including money used to tear down the old Yankee Stadium or replace parks displaced by the new stadium, the Bronx received less than its usual percentage of capital funds directed by the mayor’s office.

Bronx Parks Commissioner Hector Aponte has said that the department did not have the resources to complete all the jobs in that timeframe.

Karen Argenti, a fierce critic of the Croton Water Filtration Plant for years, said she doesn’t necessarily blame the Parks Department because it could “only do so much” with the resources given.

“The buck stops at the feet of Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker [Sheldon] Silver. If they wanted this done, they would have provided the money, the staff and whatever expertise Bronx Parks Capital needed. There is no way around the facts,” Ms. Argenti wrote in an e-mail. “We got robbed.”

Surprisingly, the audit points out that the city spent approximately $10 million on projects that were never supposed to receive Croton money. Mr. Liu contends that those projects, which include Orchard Beach renovation and a seating area in Grant Park, should have been funded by other means.

The audit also does not dig into many of the projects that were promised in an earlier ULURP agreement from 1999. DEP officials have said that the DEP does not have the money to construct one of the projects included in the zoning document — a pedestrian footbridge over the Major Deegan Expressway in Van Cortlandt Park.