Mayor Cherelle Parker last week proposed a $6.74 billion city budget for the 2026 fiscal year that begins in July, with big investments in housing and drug recovery programs and a new plan to start cutting business taxes every year.
After she gave her budget address, her administration released details about specific spending lines as well as data on the activities of city departments over the past year.
Beyond the big headline items, we’ve pulled out some highlights from the city’s five-year plan and other budget documents. We also list below City Council’s schedule of budget hearings.
The budget must be reviewed, approved and signed by the end of June. If you want to dig in yourself, budget documents have been posted online by City Council and the city’s Finance Department.
● Last year advocates criticized the administration for apparently cutting the Vision Zero budget, and councilmembers recently complained that it’s unclear how much the city is actually spending on traffic safety measures like installing speed bumps and separated bike lanes.
In response, officials now say they’re proposing a combined $5 million on two Vision Zero budget lines in the coming year, and the same amount for each of the following five years. They would also spend an additional $5 million just for concrete barriers for the Spruce and Pine Street bike lanes and for a new line-striping crew in the Streets Department, to put down more roadway safety markings.
● The city borrowed $100 million last year to renovate and open the new Riverview Wellness Village, a 323-bed drug recovery home in Northeast Philadelphia. Now, Parker wants to spend an additional $65 million to expand the center with new buildings and another 300-plus beds.
With that spending, total capital expenditures on the project will amount to $175 million, the administration says. (It didn’t say where the other $10 million came from.)
Over the next five years, the city also wants to spend $216 million to run programs related to drug treatment and Kensington’s unsheltered population, mostly to operate Riverview and its medical, social service, job development and other programs.
● Parker proposes spending $750,000 on a Market East planning study, following the 76ers’ dropping of their plan to build an arena and make other investments on the corridor. She said Brandywine Realty Trust president and CEO Jerry Sweeney will chair the planning task force.
● While the Trump Administration is working to defund and erase publicly funded Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, the city continues to go all in on those programs.
Doing a quick DOGE-style word search of Parker’s five-year budget plan, we found many mentions of DEI and related initiatives.
They include efforts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is trying to boost its workforce diversity and buy more works by Black artists; the Free Library, which is seeking to diversify its job applicants and community programming; the Department of Labor, whose DEI mission is spelled out in the document; and the Law Department, which describes itself as “an industry leader” in DEI.
The budget includes continued funding for the mayor’s own Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Parker appointed a new chief DEI officer in October.
● Parker has taken some flak for not directly answering questions about Philadelphia’s sanctuary city status, which limits police and other agencies’ cooperation with federal immigration officials. President Donald Trump has tried in the past to withhold federal funding from Philly and other sanctuary cities, and is threatening to try again.
However, the five-year plan says the Managing Director’s Office, which oversees the Office of Immigrant Affairs, will “increase investment in legal services to support immigrants with key legal issues, including assistance with temporary protective status, asylum, and workplace rights.”
The office will spend $450,000 a year, or $2.25 million over five years, to pay organizations including the PA Immigrant Family Unity Project (PAIFUP) to provide legal counsel for immigrants, according to another budget document. The city helped establish PAIFUP in 2019 specifically to provide defense counsel for detained immigrants.
● The city will spend $74.7 million on the Free Library in fiscal 2026. That’s a small increase from the current year, and up $15 million, or 26%, since fiscal 2024.
The Free Library plans to roll out Saturday hours “across the library system” and add Sunday hours at the Central Library, three regional libraries and up to five additional neighborhood libraries. It will also finish up a strategic-planning initiative in July and will implement the plan starting in spring 2026.
● A section on the mayor’s communications office notes its efforts resulted in Parker’s social media follower counts increasing 13% in 2024, to 87,000 on X (the former Twitter), 49,000 on Facebook, and 56,900 on Instagram. Its work contributed to over 31,600 print, digital, television and radio stories that mention Parker, according to the budget document.
Its target for total followers for city and mayoral accounts is 713,543 for the current fiscal year and 749,220 for next year.
“The office will further strengthen the local news coverage of the mayor and her administration and begin building more of a following among national news media of Mayor Parker,” the document says.
● Following some confusion last year over how much the city was actually spending on Parks and Recreation, the new budget documents provide a little bit of clarity.
The department’s approved budget for fiscal 2025 was $81.5 million, but actual spending through this June is expected to reach nearly $91 million. The proposed figure for the coming year is $83.5 million — although whatever council ends up approving, spending could again surpass that over the course of the year.
The administration said last year that true spending on parks, playground and recreation centers was actually higher than it seemed, because some of those responsibilities were being shifted to other departments. In addition, Parks and Rec was having difficulty filling vacancies and was unable to spend its full budget, officials said at the time.
● The Department of Streets is on course to spend $95.8 million in the current fiscal year, about $19 million (25%) more than it was budgeted for. It’s not immediately clear from the budget documents why that’s the case.
● Despite numerous efforts to make working for the city more attractive, departments are still struggling to hire workers. Parker would fund 27,086 positions in the coming year, but the city only had 21,943 employees as of November.
Among the agencies with the biggest staffing gaps: the Fire Department is budgeted for 3,392 but only has 2,778; Free Library, budgeted for 1,009, actual 869; L&I, 448 vs. 382; Parks & Rec, 926 vs. 684; and Prisons, 2,186 vs. 1,330. Although not detailed in the budget, it’s also been reported that the Police Department has only 5,021 sworn officers, well below the 6,380 budgeted.
● The proposed budget would represent an increase of $148.7 million, or 2.3 percent, above the $6.6 billion the city is on track to spend in the current fiscal year ending in June.
The city often ends up spending more over the course of a year than was approved in the initial budget, due to unexpected costs and midyear adjustments. Last year, City Council approved a $6.37 billion budget, but the city will actually disburse the aforementioned $6.6 billion, according to the five-year plan document.
That is to say, Parker’s new proposed budget is about 6% higher than the official budget adopted for the current fiscal 2025 year. It’s also about 10% higher than the amount spent in fiscal 2024, which covered the last six months of the Kenney administration and the start of Parker’s term.
● The city’s overall revenues from various sources are expected to fall 2.6% compared to this past year, largely because federal pandemic aid finally ended in 2024.
The revenue picture is mixed, however. Collections from the wage and net profits taxes, the city’s biggest source of funds, are actually expected to increase as more people get jobs in Philadelphia and earn more money.
The city will also begin borrowing and spending hundreds of millions of dollars for Parker’s housing plan and other capital programs, which will contribute to the budget expansion.
● City Council has scheduled four hearings for members of the public to give testimony on the budget proposal. They will be held on March 26, April 30, May 13 and May 14. Instructions on how to be added to the speakers’ list are posted here.
Council will also hold hearings on many of the individual department budgets and will question department leaders. The first up are the Mayor’s office on March 25; Finance, Revenue and related offices on March 26; Technology, Human Services, Procurement and others on April 1; and Sanitation, Clean and Green, Streets, Water and the airport on April 2.
For the full list, visit City Council’s FY2026 Budget Center.
Editor’s note: The city’s list of organizations slated to receive funding for immigrant defense contained errors, which have been deleted from this article. The percentage increase of the Free Library’s budget has also been corrected.
