Audit Report On The Maintenance And Repairs Of The City’s Playgrounds By The Department Of Parks And Recreation

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) maintains a municipal parks system of more than 29,000 acres throughout the City, including more than 1,700 parks, 2,500 Greenstreet sites, and over 1,000 playgrounds. One of DPR’s principal missions is to manage and care for all playgrounds and playground fixtures in the City.

To provide local parks services, a Borough Commissioner is appointed for each of the City’s five boroughs. Each Borough commissioner oversees the management and operations of agency programs and is responsible for the administrative management of parks and green spaces within the borough, including the maintenance and repair of City parks and playgrounds. A Chief of Operations in each borough oversees the daily operations of all DPR facilities within the borough and ensures that playgrounds are properly maintained.

Audit Findings and Conclusion

The Staten Island Borough Commissioner’s office routinely cleans and maintains borough playgrounds. They completed approximately 93 percent of the work orders initiated during our audit scope period. In addition, 83 percent of the work orders issued and completed were completed within 30 days. The remaining 17 percent of work orders were completed beyond 30 days. Furthermore, of the 90 “Immediate Attention” (IA) conditions reported to the Borough Office, six IAs (7 percent) were not resolved within the required 30 days. In fact, some took from 38 days to 63 days. We also found that Staten Island Borough district offices lack guidelines that specify the timeframes for the repair of non-IA conditions.

Based on work order descriptions provided by DPR, we found that 11 work orders may have been classified as requiring IA if the conditions had been identified by Parks Inspection Program (PIP) inspectors. These items were not resolved in a timely manner. Additionally, the District offices are not effectively monitoring the status of open work orders and the information in the “Asset Management Property System” (AMPS)¹ is often not correct.

The timeliness of DPR’s resolution of IA repairs, while not egregious, will be affected in the near term by the impact of Hurricane Sandy, resulting in the increased importance of prioritizing those items that represent IAs or hazardous conditions.

Audit Recommendations

This report makes a total of six recommendations, including that DPR should:

• Implement standards to ensure that supervisory inspections adhere to PIP standards for remediating IA conditions.
• Remediate all work orders with hazardous conditions within 30 days.
• Ensure that IA items are resolved within 30 days.
• Categorize conditions identified by District Supervisors using the same criteria used by the PIP inspectors.
• Regularly monitor the status of open work orders and update them in AMPS.
• Follow up on work order requests to ensure they have been processed.

Agency Response

In their response, DPR officials contended that the work orders were prioritized and completed in a timely manner and disagreed with “several findings in the reports regarding how Parks manages its maintenance program and its work orders.” However, DPR officials agreed that the reports “raised some important issues regarding the maintenance and repair of the City’s playgrounds which we appreciate” and “…We agree that a formal review process for all open work orders would ensure that all requests are managed appropriately.”

The agency also said, “In addition, upon careful review of Parks operations and the recommendations in the report, we believe that current and action underway already address the issues raised.”