There’s a lot of mint in Strawberry Fields!
Top executives at the Central Park Conservancy — a tax-exempt group that famously manages and maintains the world-renowned park under a contractual agreement with the city — are raking in mounds of green, records show.
President and CEO Elizabeth Smith’s total compensation was $933,592, including her hefty bonus incentive — and 12 other officers pulled in at least $300,000 a piece, according to the group’s 2024 IRS filing for the 2023 calendar year.
The year before, Smith’s salary and benefits package came to a cool $1.178 million, while 15 others scored more than $300,000.
Smith earned $740,000 in 2021, a 22% increase from her $605,000 in salary and compensation in 2020.
By comparison, Mayor Eric Adams is paid $258,750 to oversee the entire city, and President Trump earns $400,000 to run the country.
The conservancy’s chief financial officer, Stephen Spinelli, also pulled in $654,429 — a 24% increase over four years.
The compensation of Roger Mosier, chief of park operations, topped $500,000, the 2024 IRS report revealed.
These salaries for a not-for-profit tax-exempt “charitable” group are beyond the pale, critics said.
“Those salaries and benefits are outrageous. Where do you draw the line?” said city Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens), member of the council’s Parks Committee.
“Give me a break.”
Arthur Schwartz, a lawyer who served for 20 years as chair of Manhattan Community Board 2’s Parks and Waterfront Committee in Greenwich Village, said other parks and playgrounds in the city are in desperate need of funds.
“Central Park has always been well-funded because wealthy people created a conservancy,” Schwartz said. “If they have enough money to pay these kind of salaries to executives, New York City would be better served if the Conservancy adopted some local parks in the Bronx or Queens and helped with repair, renovation and upkeep.
“No one needs a million dollars to run a park,” he said. “The mayor makes $250,000.”
Smith, who has been the conservancy’s CEO and president since 2018 and is married to Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton, took sides in a heated recent controversy related to the park by voicing support for legislation to phase out horse carriages in the Big Apple.
John Chiarello, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100 who reps the horse-carriage drivers, ripped Smith as “a detached, super-rich aristocrat attacking 170 largely immigrant carriage drivers and spreading lies about them.
“Her claim that the slow-moving horse carriages pose a danger, not the swarming e-bikes, motorized scooters and racing bicyclists that have taken over the park, is ridiculous, and reeks of an ulterior motive,” he said.
Veteran horse-carriage operator Christina Hansen, a TWU shop steward, said the riders make $50,000 to $60,000 a year, yet the Conservancy wants to put them out of business.
“They’re overpaid for what they do,” Hansen said of the Conservancy’s higher-ups.
The Conservancy is not the only non-profit group whose high salaries have faced scrutiny.
Executive salaries have skyrocketed at the nonprofit that runs the city’s 9/11 Memorial and Museum — even as it continues to hemorrhage money — infuriating families of the victims, The Post recently reported.
The Central Park Conservancy generated $172 million in revenue during the 2024 fiscal year, of which $36.5 million was provided by the city and helped fund the new Davis Center at the Harlem Meer in the northern part of the park, as well as was used for operating aid, according to the group’s 2024 financial report.
The new Gottesman Pool — part of the recently opened Davis Center at the Harlem Meer — was a $160 million project led by the Central Park Conservancy and was funded with $60 million in city funding, in addition to private donations, Adams announced in June.
The conservancy is flush, with $400 million investments in its endowment and $677 million in net assets, documents show.
Smith and the conservancy declined to comment to The Post.
Read the full article here
