As 2024 draws to a close I sit down to write my final post of the year and my last as an officer and member of the board of the Friends of Morningside Park. I am certain that our organization will thrive under new leadership that will be in place following our Annual Meeting on January 21, 2025.
Our all volunteer organization and new leaders will continue to need the support of all of our wonderful donors and volunteers in order to succeed in their mission to continue to uplift our landmark park in a continuing climate of under-funding of our NYC parks.
In 2024 we lost the one city funded horticultural worker in our park. Ben Shupp worked tirelessly in Morningside for over 7 years but has now found employment elsewhere in NYC Parks. His open position in Morningside is in desperate need of filling. Morningside had one gardener for our 30 acre park. For comparison the zone gardener program in Central and Riverside Parks are built around having one gardener for every 10 acres. To provide that level of care,Morningside should have three gardeners or even more more given the difficult steep terrain that it occupies. Will Morningside ever get that level of care? It would only happen if we could raise significant private funds for those positions. As Morningside waits for Parks to fill even the one city gardener position that has been vacant for over half a year, the care and maintenance of our park has really suffered. Many of you have noticed and I applaud you for speaking out. We continue to raise this need with our Parks Commissioners and I have just started a petition so that you can add your voice.
Without a Parks Gardener in Morningside it has been very difficult to plan and organize volunteer events though we continue to do our best to accommodate volunteer groups and individuals who want to contribute to the park in this critical way.
On a more positive note 2024 brought us some new partnerships. We are thrilled with the in-kind support the park has received from Columbia University engineers and scientists who repaired the waterfall and have proposed a natural solution to the problem of algal blooms in the pond. We hope that solution gets all the necessary government approvals as soon as possible
In 2024 we were also thrilled to partner with the team at the Maysles Documentary Center on our Juneteenth programming and to also receive funding for our Common Ground Festival and Tree Lighting from Memorial Sloan Kettering which operates the Ralph Lauren Center in Harlem.
These new partnerships and the steadfast support of you our donors give me confidence that 2025 will be a year of great opportunity for our organization and park. There are so many new potential partners and donors to be tapped. I look forward to the continued suceess of our organization and the flourishing of our great Morningside Park.
Happy New Year to All!!
Brad Taylor
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