Testimony of Hayley Gorenberg
On Behalf of Friends of Mount Prospect Park
Presented to the New York City Charter Revision Commission
Public Hearing Conducted June 20, 2024
Thank you for the opportunity to address the core governing document for the City, guiding finance, capital projects and Parks – my case in point for today’s public comment. I’m Hayley Gorenberg, and I lead Friends of Mount Prospect Park.
Thousands of community members have responded to the City’s shocking plan to fast-track paving a 40,000sf regional-scale skate complex onto vital local green park space. This plan flagrantly contradicts our officials’ frequent green, climate, resiliency-oriented proclamations.
That we are fighting raw power in an uphill battle against pouring a mostly concrete sports complex on neighborhood green space – even as the area is full of already paved spaces, including substandard skate spaces – shows that New Yorkers need an overarching Charter mandate: a core, enacted commitment in city governance to actually (dare I say concretely) preserve – and ideally expand – urban green space.
We need a Charter that mandates a green, climate, resiliency screen for decision-making – for the good of the entire public, for all our children, for elderly people, for people with disabilities, for people in environmental justice communities. It’s truly, scientifically, factually, unavoidably existential. And it is indeed a matter of sweeping public safety and wellbeing for New Yorkers and our families.
We see awareness of our climate-related wellbeing siloed in agencies under a slew of laws, rules, policies, surveys – as well as reports on the laws, rules, policies and surveys.
Nevertheless, our officials are pushing to pave our green park, over all of these provisions – and widespread, vehement objection. We’ve been told it’s a “done deal,” and we should shut up – and that it was expected our neighborhood would be easy to roll. We’re called antagonistic, racist and rude if we question paving green space used every day by a diverse swath of Brooklyn, diverse by race, age, ability, and many other axes of the mosaic of Brooklyn. Daycares and camps use Mount Prospect Park because they need the green space for children. Elderly people and people with physical disabilities and with sensitivities to stimuli use it as a relatively manageable green space, in contrast to the high-speed loop of dynamic Prospect Park. Anyone and everyone can currently use the green park space flexibly and for free – in contrast to having it paved for a narrow use that requires purchasing specialized equipment.
Increasingly common storms, cloudburst events and even just rain overwhelm our drainage and sewage systems, causing flooding and contamination. The area floods spectacularly, and paving makes that worse.
The library next door has a cooling center because of killer heat that’s getting worse – and the raw heat is aggravated by paved heat islands. We’ve just gone through the hottest May on record, after the hottest year on record, and the heat’s projected to get worse. New York City has been reclassified – we are now living in a humid subtropical climate zone.
So if in 2024, our officials tell Brooklynites to shut up and take it while our critical green space is paved, we want a Charter revision that serves all of us and all our families, by making climate, resiliency and green a governing mandate and part of our lived reality – not just when our officials feel like posting for Earth Day on instagram.
Thank you.
