Mayor Adams names NYC's new parks commissioner, first Latina to hold job

Mayor Eric Adams named a new parks commissioner on Sunday, picking the department’s first deputy to take the helm overseeing the city’s 30,000 acres of green spaces and beaches.

Adams said Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, a seasoned public servant who first joined the parks department in 1986, would take charge of the agency following the resignation of former parks commissioner Sue Donoghue at the end of May.

Rodriguez-Rosa is the first Latina to lead the parks department. She was appointed to the agency's first deputy position in 2022, and previously served as Bronx Borough Parks Commissioner.

Her appointment came as the city entered another summer with a shortage of lifeguards, a problem that’s persisted since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adams said Rodriguez-Rosa was “ready now to lead” during a news conference.

“She is aware of every nook and cranny of the parks in this city,” the mayor said. “She has witnessed the good times, the bad times, the disinvestment, the moments that we have ignored park spaces in certain communities.”

News of Donohue’s planned departure last month marked the latest in a string of high profile resignations in the Adams administration since the mayor was indicted on federal corruption charges last year, only to have his case dropped at the request of U.S. Department of Justice officials under President Donald Trump.

Rodriguez-Rosa, 68, said her appointment was the culmination of decades of service to the city.

“I had various positions in the parks department,” she recalled. “I was actually in operations. I was a director of community boards. I was the chief of recreation and public programs, doing events and things like that for children.”

Rodriguez-Rosa said she’s working to ensure the city’s public pools have enough lifeguards to open without disruptions on June 27. The city’s beaches opened for swimming over Memorial Day weekend.

According to a parks department spokesperson, the city has hired 310 new lifeguards for the summer and is on pace of having nearly 1,000 lifeguards in time for the pools to open.

That’s still short of the roughly 1,400 lifeguards the city had on its payroll pre-pandemic. The ongoing shortage has forced the parks department to scale back popular programs, like adult lap swim at public pools.

“We're starting to do some very creative outreach efforts. One is to be able to talk to schools and have children understand water safety … and in doing so, we're also introducing them to the lifeguard world,” said Rodriguez-Rosa. “Some of them are really interested in coming and becoming lifeguards in the future.”