As Mayor Cherelle Parker works to get her $6.7 billion proposed budget passed by the end of June, she and her entire cabinet have been barnstorming around the city, holding a series of town halls to explain the spending plan to residents.
There’s little doubt that the budget, which covers the 2026 fiscal year that starts next month, will win City Council approval during a series of hearings over the next three weeks.
But Parker said she nonetheless wants officials to get out of City Hall and into Philly’s neighborhoods, to lay out to the public how tax dollars are being spent and what they’re trying to accomplish.
When she was first learning about working in government, “the worst thing in the world that you could say to an elected official is, ‘The only time that we see you, or you come talk to us, is when you’re knocking on our doors asking for our votes,’ ” Parker told residents gathered at Deliverance Evangelistic Church in North Philly for her most recent town hall Monday night.
“So I am trained that you don’t sit in the office when you’re doing your work, no matter what the issue is,” she said. “You don’t ever allow anybody else to speak for you.”
To that end, Parker and her top staff spent two hours explaining — in detail — and seeking to justify the gamut of programs and expenditures they’re planning for the next year and beyond, in areas ranging from housing assistance and illegal dumping cleanup to tax cuts and police body-worn cameras.
The event was the seventh of nine planned town halls the administration has been holding in different council districts since mid-April. Two more are planned, on June 9 in South Philadelphia and June 11 in West Philadelphia.
Here’s a sampling of what officials said Monday night.
Homeownership as a path to pride
Parker began by reading from a profile of the 5th Councilmanic District, where the church is located, including its racial, income, gender and income data, and recounting her own connections to various places in North Philly when she was growing up.
“How many of you all remember something that used to look like flags that they used to put on a block at the top?” she asked during an aside about block pride on her great-grandmother’s street. Audience members yelled back, “Streamers, streamers.” “They had planters going up and down the block, the streamers, they would go across, and then they would have planters on each side of the street,” Parker said.
The 5th District is “highly educated,” she said, with 90% of residents having a high school diploma or higher degree, and has a lot of new families, as indicated by the large number of women aged 20 to 24 living in the area. Two-thirds of the residents are renters, a not entirely welcome increase from previous decades, she said.
“I am unapologetic about attempting to use housing as a tool to put people on the path to self-sufficiency,” she said. “You take care of things differently when you own the bricks that you live in. You have the ability to fix up, sweep up, clean up. The pride and the dignity associated with when you own, it’s extremely important.”
Separate from the regular budget, Parker has proposed borrowing $800 million and using additional outside funding to support more than two dozen new and existing housing-related programs, including home repairs, mortgage and rental assistance, the Turn the Key affordable housing program, and redevelopment of vacant parcels.
“We understand that the easiest home for you to own is the one you already have,” said Angela Brooks, the recently appointed chief housing and urban development officer, later in the evening. “So we want to make sure we protect the ability for many of you to stay in your homes, or age in place, or ensure that you have a legacy for your children and your grandchildren.”
Council is expected to approve several of the bills creating Parker’s proposed H.O.M.E. initiative this week. However, parts of the package are facing resistance, including the expansion of certain benefits to middle-income residents, and efforts to slightly loosen council’s tight control of the land disposition and zoning processes.
Applause for tax cuts and lower crime
Much of the city’s presentation focused on the nitty-gritty of budgeting, such as the difference between Class 1 expenditures (salaries) and Class 2 (outside contracting); the breakdown of tax revenues (68% from various business taxes versus 17% from property taxes); and the importance of maintaining a “positive fund balance,” or financial cushion.
“A fund balance is basically what’s left over in your bank account at the end of the year,” said Sabrina Maynard, the city’s budget director, as she pointed to a chart projected on a pair of screens in the front of the room. “So you earn a paycheck, you buy groceries, you pay rent, hopefully there’s a little bit left over. That’s our cushion. So when there’s uncertainty, that’s what we draw upon to help us cover costs.”
Microphone issues made it difficult to understand some of the speakers; at one point, audience members told finance director Rob Dubow they couldn’t hear him, and he moved to a different spot to try to fix the problem.
They applauded, however, when Dubow mentioned Parker’s plans to gradually reduce the Business Income & Receipts Tax over 14 years, in an effort to encourage businesses to locate in Philadelphia and hire more employees.
The residents, many of them church members, sat in rows of chairs set up in the Deliverance Evangelistic chapel. They were surrounded on three sides by information tables staffed with representatives from city agencies — behavioral health, 911, Licenses & Inspections, Parks & Recreation, the Water Department, and many others — as well as organizations like PECO and Community College of Philadelphia.
The audience clapped at times, as when chief public safety director Adam Geer noted that installing LED street lights had led to reductions in violent crime in certain areas, and that the city was giving $18 million in anti-violence grants to 5th District organizations.
Other city officials briefly described various projects Parker has prioritized, such as the “wellness ecosystem” of treatment centers, shelters, and court diversion programs the city is developing to move homeless drug users off the streets of Kensington.
The mayor and others emphasized their efforts to develop both the city and private workforce. Chief administrative officer Camille Duchaussee noted that upped recruitment and retention programs had helped stem the tide of city worker “leakage” and bring the city’s payroll up to 29,200 employees. Though still far short of the number needed, it’s about 1,000 more than at this time last year, she said.
Some questions unanswered
Clean & Green director Carlton Williams drew some of the loudest cheers and clapping, along with enthusiastic nods from Parker, when he talked about twice-a-week trash pickup coming to North Philly later this year, the higher fines and tougher enforcement against illegal dumpers, increased cleaning of commercial corridors, and other sanitation programs.
“I want to thank Mayor Parker and our entire team for the hard work, but certainly want to thank our block captains that are here, our residents that are here — all of y’all play a big role in helping us achieve that vision, and we look forward to continuously working with each and every one of you,” he said to applause.
The event at times had the feeling of a Parker campaign rally, with many of the officials praising their boss or noting her longtime interest or particular enthusiasm for certain initiatives, such as the Taking Care of Business cleaning program she helped create as councilmember and the H.O.M.E. initiative, which Brooks described as Parker’s “baby.”
After the presentation ended, a crowd gathered around the mayor at the front of the room to chat with her and ask questions, until a phalanx of aides extracted her and quickly escorted her out of the building.
Some of those who attended said they were glad to have the chance to hear about the city budget, even if their particular questions were not answered.
Darnetta Arce, who works for a workforce development nonprofit, said she was particularly interested in learning about the budgets of individual city departments and understanding why it takes a long time for nonprofit organizations to receive their city funding.
“I could not hear too well, so that’s part of the problem. But I did take a look at the PowerPoint that was provided, and I kind of understood what was going on with that, but I would love to hear more about how and who gets the opportunity to receive money from the budget,” she said.
Dwayne Smith, a church member and police department administrative employee, said he would have liked to hear more about efforts to reduce violence and improve safety on SEPTA, which is independent from the city but receives some city funding.
He said he takes transit for free, thanks to the city’s participation in the SEPTA Key Advantage program, but is concerned that he never sees any police officers on the trains.
