This could be you... if the Parks Department's budget is cut.

Early this morning, a handful of city park advocates, a trio of council members, and a smattering of curious onlookers gathered on the steps of City Hall to talk parks, budget cuts and leafy green things.

“Funding for our parks must be restored,” cried City Councilmember Brad Lander, who was joined at the rally by park-loving compatriots Melissa Mark-Viverito and James Oddo.

The last few years have not been kind to the Department of Parks and Recreation, which has been the victim of a number of heavy-handed budget cuts since 2008. This year, the Parks Department faces a proposed budget cut of $33.4 million that, if approved, would lead to a cumulative loss of $62 million in funding—or 17 percent—over the last five years.

“New York City’s 2,100 parks are an irreplaceable treasure, providing places for New Yorkers to play, relax, run, bike, picnic, perform, gather, and connect to nature,” Mr. Lander wrote in a statement.

New Yorkers For Parks (NY4P) Executive Director, Holly Leicht, who helped organize the rally, said that cutting parks funding is “more serious than people realize,” because it is a “disinvestment in our parks and the city’s economic future.”

And she has a point. Grass cutting and tree trimming costs money! The Parks Department does not just spend its cash on park benches, Narnia-esque lamp posts and the occasional swan. The bulk of the funding goes towards maintenance and operations, including trimming trees, cutting off dangerous or low-hanging branches, repairing and maintaining surfaces, controlling insect populations, removing snow and cleaning up litter and bathrooms.

And weeds aren't the only ramifications of budget cuts. The rally comes on the heels of a recent announcement that four public pools—Mayor Wagner Pool in Manhattan, Howard Pool in Brooklyn, Fort Totten Pool in Queens, and Faber Pool in Staten Island—will remain closed for the summer if money is not restored to the budget. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed pool cuts for three years in a row according to the Staten Island Advance, which also includes closing the city pools two weeks earlier than normal. If Mayor Bloomberg gets his way, and the four pools remain dry this summer, the city expects to save a total of $1.5 million.

But is it worth it?

“No, I don’t think it is,” a young mother of two, who declined to give her name, said at the rally this morning. “It’s like, I take my kids to the park all the time. They like the park. But if it’s not safe, or clean, or, you know, maintained, then what I am gonna do?”

“I had no idea this was going on,” she added.

Of course, maintenance reductions go hand in hand with maintenance staff cuts and if the park's funding cuts are approved, up to 800 jobs are at risk, according to NY4P.

So can anything be done to prevent this? Will the city's wealthy elite finally step forward in support of the parks?  It doesn't look good, but for the superstitious, there's always crossing your fingers, blowing on dandelions, or plucking out ‘dem eyelashes. 

jschiewe@observer.com

Now, one of the elected officials who signed on to the letter is putting some distance between herself and de Blasio.

"I would not have signed on to the letter if it called for lifting the cap on charter schools," City Councilwoman Melissa Mak-Viverito told me in a brief telephone interview this morning. She said one of her staffers alerted her to de Blasio's statements about lifting the cap, and criticism that the councilwoman was getting for supporting it.

"But the letter was about reform, not about lifting the cap," Viverito told me.

Yesterday on her blog, Viverito wrote:

"I just learned that, upon release, this letter was accompanied by a statement from Public Advocate de Blasio in support of raising the cap on charter schools in our State. It is important to note that the letter itself does not call for the charter school cap to be lifted, and at the time I signed on to this letter, I was not aware that it would be attached to the Public Advocate’s statement.

"I would like to clarify at this time that until real reforms to our charter schools are implemented, such as those outlined in the letter, I will not support any actions taken to raise the charter school cap."'

In presenting both issues to the media, de Blasio said:

"I strongly support raising the cap on charter schools and giving New York State the best possible opportunity to compete for much needed federal education funding.  I have submitted the following letter to Governor Paterson and the State Legislature asking them to adopt new measures that build upon the successes in our charter school system by increasing efficiency, transparency, and accessibility."

UPDATE: A spokesman for de Blaiso sends this statement: "As indicated by the headline, the statement speaks to Bill's position on this issue and no one else's."

The Katz campaign gathered outside City Hall for a very public photo-op in an effort to offset the notion that John Liu is the only candidate in the race with diverse support.

“I’m honored to have such a good relationship with the people I work with,” said Katz.

Attendees include Maria Baez, Annabel Palma, Maria del Carmen Arroyo, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Helen Foster, Julissa Ferreras, Diana Reyna and Miguel Martinez.

They posed for several photographs as a group, then broke up into smaller groups, presumably to produce pictures for use in more-targeted mailings later in the campaign. They’re all up for re-election this September.

Attending Michael Bloomberg’s press conference inside a restaurant on 106th Street in Spanish Harlem this afternoon were two members of the City Council and John Ruiz, who the mayor noted is retired from the F.D.N.Y. and “a vice chairman of the Manhattan Democratic Party.”

Afterward, Ruiz was approached by a few reporters about why he was at the event.

Ruiz said he invited by his local City Council member, Melissa Mark-Viverito, because he is a local district leader. (The other Council member at the event was Council Speaker Christine Quinn.)

Ruiz said his attendance does not constitute an endorsement, but he said it was nice to be noticed by the mayor.

“I think it’s nice the mayor acknowledges community leaders,” Ruiz said after the event. “It’s so important because sometimes, we’re the guys who are forgotten. It’s so respectful of him to say, ‘Hey, this is John Ruiz, he’s a district leader.’”

Later, Mark-Viverito walked over and I asked her why she invited a district leader to the mayor’s event. “Oh, I invited all the district leaders. I’m a Democrat. I invited all my district leaders, and John came.”

Mark-Viverito said the day’s announcement was to encourage people to visit “our neighborhood. They represent our neighborhood.”

I told Mark-Viverito that Bloomberg is running on the Republican and Independence lines for re-election, and asked if she had reached out to district leaders in those parties to invite them.

“No, because we really don’t have those in East Harlem. In East Harlem, we never have a Republican running. In East Harlem, it’s a Democratic stronghold,” she said.

Mark-Viverito said she has not made any decision about who she’ll endorse in the mayor’s race, only saying, “I am a Democrat.” When asked, she acknowledged it would be tough for a Democrat to win this year, saying, “It’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. Clearly, the playing field is not equal.”

“I had to hang the telephone on him because he was calling my office in Albany,” Arroyo, an Assemblywoman from the Bronx, said in a telephone interview from her home. “He has to be careful. I’m not going to discuss politics on that phone. I shouldn’t.”

“It’s not because I hate him or something like that,” Arroyo said. “You’re talking to me on my house [phone]. He could do the same thing.”

Thompson may want to save himself the call.

“To make a change now is very dangerous for the city,” said Arroyo, who supported Republicans George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani in the past. “But we have time to think about it.”

A number of Democrats—many of whom are naturally more sympathetic to Thompson than Arroyo is—are expressing early reservations about Thompson’s prospects in a mayoral race against Michael Bloomberg, an independent-registered billionaire who will likely be running, as he did in 2001 and 2005, as a Republican.

The Bloomberg campaign is already running slick television and radio ads, opening campaign offices in every borough and making overtures to traditional Democratic allies. The Thompson campaign, by contrast, has been somewhat hard to detect.

Letitia James, a councilwoman from Brooklyn who is supporting Thompson, said she was hoping to see more outreach from her preferred candidate.

“It’s certainly not the grass-roots campaign I was anticipating,” said James at an April 9 press event on a rooftop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where Bloomberg had just unveiled some environmental initiatives. “But it’s still early.”

(James said Bloomberg’s aides called her numerous times asking her to attend the event.)

Leroy Comrie, a councilman from Queens, said in a telephone interview on April 10 that his mostly middle-class constituents have a “natural affinity, as do I, towards Bill Thompson.”

The Thompson campaign, he offered, is still working a few things out.

Thompson “needs to focus his race towards having a base of support in the November election” and “find what is the best way to identify his campaign. I think they’re sitting back and trying to figure that out.”

Melissa Mark Viverito, a councilwoman from Manhattan with strong ties to labor, said she had meetings with Thompson and, separately, with Bloomberg campaign representatives at a coffee shop in her district.

Viverito said she had yet to decide whom she would support, but she did take note of the praise heaped onto Bloomberg on April 6 by Representative Charles Rangel, who also represents her district, and former President Bill Clinton.

At separate events on the same day, both said Bloomberg had done “great” in his job as mayor.

“I obviously value the opinion of my congressman and former president,” said Viverito. “My process of vetting includes having conversations with people like that.”

For its part, the Thompson campaign says that it's too early for Democrats to be judging the strength of their effort, and that Bloomberg's efforts at this point are actually grounds for encouragement.

"He’s got to be worried about something," said Thompson campaign spokesman Eddie Castell. "For them to be out there this much this early tells you something. A two-term incumbent mayor, you’d think he has a record to run on. But the campaign feels the need to sort of get out there as soon as they can and start to put out propaganda in paid ads as early as April 2009. It tells you they’re worried.”

Castell said that the Thompson campaign will be announcing the hire of a deputy campaign manager later this week, and of a press secretary next week.

“We’re building smartly and strategically and we’ll be rolling out that way as well,” he said.

But even some longtime, reliably liberal party stalwarts—ones who will almost certainly end up supporting Thompson—have seemed oddly reluctant to express their support publicly.

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, for example, attended a March 26 fund-raiser for Thompson in Manhattan. But when she was asked by reporters why she was there—and whether she was supporting Thompson for mayor—she beat a hasty retreat.

“I'm not saying anything,” she said. “I like breakfast.”

Queens Borough President Helen Marshall told people at a March 19 fund-raiser for Peter Vallone Jr., “It's a pleasure to welcome the mayor back to our borough. He won this borough before and he will again.”

In a March 24 interview, Marshall told me she’ll support the Democratic nominee.

Then, unprompted, she said Bloomberg should have tried for it.

Marshall, who was in Sunnyside to see Bloomberg speak to the chamber of commerce there, said, “Whoever the Democrats appoint, is the person I’ll support. He should have tried to go for the Democratic designation too. He should have. I think it would have been close. I think he would have had a good shot.”

(A Bloomberg campaign official told me it was “very unlikely” the mayor would get into the Democratic primary, and said that while they were making a “serious effort” for the Working Families Party support, it was “a long shot.”)

Castell contends, gamely, that the Bloomberg campaign's expensive blur of activity at this point was so much stagecraft.

“The conversation that’s happening out there in the grass roots—in the civic organizations, meeting with people, not things that are staged the way Bloomberg’s campaign is staging stuff, but the stuff that is happening out there for real and organically—that’s the true measure of what is going on in the campaign,” he said.

City Councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito of Manhattan: “It was inspiring. What she was doing was giving us a charge” and “telling us we've got a job to do.”

City Councilman Diana Reyna of Brooklyn: "It was the most powerful performance."

Assemblyman Karim Camara of Brooklyn: “Hopefully, she silenced a lot of the dissenters by showing that she is passionate about Obama’s candidacy.”

The elected officials on the host committee for the event include Yvette Clarke, Jeff Aubry, Jose Peralta, Maria del Carmen Arroyo, Maria Baez, Helen Foster and Melissa Mark Viverito.

One of her strongest opponents is Adolfo Carrion, the only Latino in the race.

It’s worth noting that Arroyo, Baez and Foster are also, like Carrion, from the Bronx.

The invitation also includes a number of big real estate people who sit on Katz’s finance committee: Douglas Durst, Peter Kalikow and Richard Ravitch. Katz recently said that her connections to the real estate industry are an asset to her.

More recently, Lew Fidler, an opponent of the measure, estimated that there were 29 members who will vote against it, but he also expressed concern over the pressure Michael Bloomberg has been applying. Does Christine Quinn, who favors congestion pricing and who called the vote for 3:30 today, know something he doesn't?

UPDATE: One of the undeclared members, Miguel Martinez, just told me he'll be voting in favor of congestion pricing. I asked another undeclared member, Jessica Lappin, who was walking into the members lounge just now, how she will vote. "You'll just have to wait and see," she said.

UPDATE TWO: Mathieu Eugene just walked into City Hall and told me he is likely voting against it. He likes the plan but is against the financial burden it imposes.

Erik Dilan, who was also previously undeclared, is voting "no."

UPDATE THREE: A reporter who spoke to Alan Gerson on the record tells me he is voting "yes," although he had previously answered "no" to the New York Times survey. According to my sources, Mike McMahon of Staten Island is also switching from a "no" to a "yes" vote, while his likely opponent in the Staten Island borough president race, Jimmy Oddo, is voting against.

Sitting at the same table were, from left to right, state comptroller Tom DiNapoli, mayoral hopeful John Catsimatidis, city Councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito, City Councilwoman Inez Dickens, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, likely mayoral candidate Bill Thompson, Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal and City Councilman John Liu.

Also in attendance were: city comptroller candidates Melinda Katz, David Yassky, Adolfo Carrion, Simcha Felder, likely mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, likely public advocate candidate Eric Gioia, Representative Jerry Nadler and City Councilwoman Gale Brewer.

Not in attendance was likely mayoral candidate Christine Quinn. An event organizer showed me, but would not provide a copy of, the email inviting Quinn to attend the event and receive an award from the group. Quinn reportedly had a scheduling conflict and could not attend.

Walking out of the event, I asked Tom DiNapoli what he thought of Albany County District Attorney David Soares’ report which said former Governor Eliot Spitzer was heavily involved in the effort to use the state police to disseminate Joe Bruno’s travel records.

DiNapoli laughed and said, “I’m happy I’m the comptroller. That’s my statement.”