If the entirety of Ferry Point Park, which serves a poor surrounding area, were well kept, then the presence of the golf course, meant for marketing executives in Westchester County and bond traders in TriBeCa, might be easier to tolerate. Sitting on the southeastern shore of the Bronx, Ferry Point is a vast park, bifurcated by the Whitestone Bridge. In addition to the golf course, it encompasses a nine-acre green space and playground bordering a public-housing project, just beyond a fence along the fairway, and a second area, west of the bridge. But despite all the money that went into building the course, the park, created in conjunction with it, still did not have bathrooms last year. This year, the bathrooms are in place, but the park is so poorly shaded that parents in the neighborhood said it continued to be rarely used.

On the day I visited, the water fountain closest to the playground was not working. Last summer when I went, none of the fountains were working at all, so this was ostensibly an improvement. In the part of the park known as Ferry Point West, where Latino immigrants congregate and cook out on the weekends, bathrooms that were supposed to be completed in 2012 and were delayed because of Hurricane Sandy were still not built. They were scheduled to be finished this year; the parks department now says they will not be completed until the winter. A row of trees that stood as a Sept. 11 memorial had been vandalized and desecrated but had yet to be replaced. In this part of the park, too, the first water fountain I landed at didn’t work. The parking lot was filthy. None of the money earmarked by the mayor to make the city’s parks system more equitable has ever been directed to Ferry Point.

Although blame for the arrangement with Mr. Trump must be laid at the feet of Mr. Bloomberg, whose speech at the Democratic National Convention made it clear what he thought of the candidate as a businessman, it is the current mayor whose vision for the city is least clear when you find yourself in a park where imbalances in the city’s fortunes are among the most stark. A few days ago, two young fathers from the Throggs Neck Houses who had taken their children to the playground just over the fence from the golf course looked out at it. They didn’t know that Mr. Trump was involved. They did know that no one had asked them if they would ever want to learn to play.