Parks Overtime Has Quadrupled in Six Years

Parks Department overtime quadrupled in six years. The annual total was $1.5 million in 2020, $6.1 million in 2025, and the line has not flattened. 2026 Q1 (January–March) alone hit $1.4 million, which puts this year on pace for a record. ^[1]

But the growth is only half of it. Every Q3 (summer) brings a spike, and Parks overtime runs 2x to 6x higher in Q3 than in Q1 every year from 2021 on - the within-year ratio has held through five straight years. The 2023 summer was the largest spike by ratio (6.12x). The 2025 summer was the smallest by ratio (2.03x) and the second-largest by absolute dollars, with $2.25 million paid out in a single quarter. The pattern is structural, and the dollars keep growing.

The Growth

The chart at the top of this article shows the seasonal shape behind the dollars below. Annual overtime has grown almost every year, with one brief reprieve. $1.5 million in 2020 (suppressed by reduced COVID operations), $3.7 million in 2021 as the city reopened, $4.7 million in 2022, $4.1 million in 2023 (a brief dip), then back up to $5.7 million in 2024 and $6.1 million in 2025. Across the six-year window, Parks accrued $25.7 million in overtime.

This isn't a discretionary overtime problem. Parks is seasonal by design - the city knows summer is coming, knows what it will cost, and could plan for it. The cost keeps growing anyway, and the reason isn't that anything broke. The mismatch between workforce size and summer demand hasn't been resolved, and the city has been paying for it, year after year, and the check has gotten bigger.

The Spike, Every Year

The within-year pattern is a constant. Q1 is the low point - winter quiet, fewer events, fewer facilities open, fewer crews in the field. Q2 begins the climb: spring preparation, grounds maintenance, facility openings, programming ramp-up. Q3 is the peak - full summer operations, extended hours, events and programming in full swing. Q4 drops, but the descent is slower than the ascent. The ramp-down takes longer than the ramp-up.

The shoulder is part of the problem. Q2 - spring - is already elevated above Q1 in every year of the data: 1.5x in 2025, 3.7x in 2021. Summer preparation starts early. By the time July arrives, the department has been running above baseline for months - sustained elevated staffing costs before the true peak even arrives.

The variation in spike magnitude is informative. 2020 was suppressed by COVID. 2021 and 2022 carried the post-pandemic surge. 2023 hit the highest ratio at 6.12x. 2024 and 2025 moderated toward the low end of the historical range. But the ratios tell only half the story. The 2025 spike was the smallest by ratio and the second-largest by dollars - and every "moderation" in the ratio chart but 2025's has come on top of a peak that is much larger than the year before.

The Workforce Is Swelling on Both Ends

When I sorted the headcount data by quarter and year, I saw something the seasonality chart does not show on its own. The seasonal workforce is becoming a more permanent one. Q1 headcount at Parks has grown from 838 workers in 2021 to 1,213 workers in 2025 - a 44.7% increase in what is nominally the off-season. Q3 headcount has grown too, from 1,680 to 2,158 over the same window - a 28.5% increase. Both ends of the workforce are swelling.

The dollars show the same shape from a different angle. Q1 overtime - the supposed low season - grew from $311,000 in 2020 to $1,111,000 in 2025, a 3.56x increase. The winter floor is rising almost as fast as the summer peak. The seasonal workforce is no longer very seasonal.

Every summer the workforce swells and overtime still spikes. The seasonal hiring is real and substantial, but it isn't enough. Even with both ends of the workforce growing, Parks still can't meet summer demand without significant overtime, which means the demand itself is growing faster than the workforce can absorb.

For Parks workers who actually earn overtime in Q3 - roughly a third of the workforce - those hours represent about 22% of their quarterly compensation.^[2] A worker earning a $60,000 annual base salary and pulling Q3 overtime would receive roughly $4,200 in overtime on top of their $15,000 quarterly base. That is premium pay on top of a swelling workforce, and it is what the structural mismatch costs the city in both directions.

Parks vs. Streets

The pattern is distinct from other city departments. Streets Department overtime is substantially larger in absolute dollars than Parks every year - typically running several times Parks' annual total - but it is elevated year-round: snow removal, infrastructure repairs, ongoing maintenance. Streets is high all the time. Parks is high in summer and structurally lower in winter, except that the winter floor has risen along with the summer peak.

In summer 2025, the divergence was sharp enough to flip. Parks overtime ($2.25M in Q3) actually exceeded Streets overtime ($1.83M in Q3) - an unusual inversion. The peak is where Parks catches up to a department that runs hot year-round. The two problems are different. Parks has a seasonal surge that grows larger every year. Streets has a structural floor that never falls. Both cost the city, and neither has been solved.

What the City Pays For

The data points to a staffing question the city has not answered: what is the optimal year-round headcount for a department whose work is fundamentally seasonal, and whose seasonal demand is growing every year?

The current answer is to do both things at once. The city is swelling headcount on both ends of the calendar - Q1 workers up 44.7% over five years, Q3 workers up 28.5% - and it is paying overtime that has quadrupled over the same window. That is double-paying for seasonal labor: both the cost of more workers and the premium on their hours, with the second cost growing faster than the first.

The alternative would be either a larger permanent workforce that absorbs summer demand without so much overtime, or a more aggressive off-season reduction paired with a different hiring model for peak season. Neither is simple. But what the city is doing right now isn't a solution - it's just a description of the problem. The city spends more every year, and the spike comes back every summer, because the mismatch between workforce size and summer demand hasn't been resolved. The cost keeps growing, and the spike keeps returning, and the dollars have quadrupled over six years with no sign of flattening.