Provides assistance to municipalities for vital park maintenance, beautification
 
(Long Island, NY) In a vote on the Assembly floor today, an “Adopt-a-Park” bill co-sponsored by Assemblyman Dean Murray (R,C-East Patchogue) passed overwhelmingly. The legislation creates a program similar to the popular “Adopt-a-Highway” initiative and allows volunteers to cooperate on projects to maintain and beautify parks through vandalism remediation, litter removal, developing and maintaining nature trails and planting and maintaining flowerbeds.
 
Under the “Adopt-a-Park” program, staffing at state parks would be maintained. The volunteers would serve as an additional resource for park employees to utilize in the face of budgetary constraints.
 
“Parks are among the most valuable and treasured resources our state has to offer, but upkeep has sadly fallen to the wayside in recent years,” said Murray, who is the Ranking Member of the Assembly Committee on Tourism, Parks, Arts and Sports Development. “My legislation will help municipalities and their limited budgets and resources by allowing the Parks commissioner to develop a program for volunteers to help maintain these jewels of our communities, while maintaining the current staffing levels the parks need in order to operate.”