Mayor Cherelle Parker says gun-violence prevention and trash cleanup will be in her first major spending plan

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is scheduled to unveil her administration’s first budget proposal next week, a major opportunity for the city’s new chief executive to advance her agenda — and she’s dropped a few hints about what might be in it.

While Parker’s administration has yet to release details on her first spending plan, it is expected to focus on improving public safety and initiatives to make the city more “clean and green,” and is likely to include multiple streams of funding that go toward achieving those goals.

Parker has also hinted that she may request an increase in funding to the Police Department, which this year was allocated more than $800 million, the most of any city agency. Parker campaigned on bolstering hiring within the force, and she said this week that some technological upgrades are required for the department to improve its investigative capacity.

A mayor’s first budget proposal can set the tone for their administration. For example, former Mayor Jim Kenney’s first budget plan included his signature tax on sweetened beverages, which funded free pre-K for thousands of children and upgrades to city parks and recreation centers. Those initiatives remain core to his legacy.

After Parker, a Democrat, unveils her budget proposal on March 14, her administration will negotiate for months with City Council, which must approve a spending plan by the end of the current fiscal year in June.

Here’s what Parker said this week about what she’ll ask for:

Parker on Tuesday met with a group of gun-violence prevention advocates and residents who had lost loved ones to shootings during a roundtable convened by City Council President Kenyatta Johnson. After listening to the advocates share prevention strategies for more than 90 minutes, Parker told them that her administration would use its budget proposal to “affirm to you what we think about addressing this issue.”

She said her budget would support “credible messengers” and “organizations that have a track record of connecting with the populations that need it most,” and that her administration would seek to create a standard operating procedure for how the city responds to families that are affected by a homicide.

» READ MORE: A key Philly gun violence prevention program is struggling to meet basic goals, new report says

Over the last several years, the city has poured millions of dollars into a new program that provides grant dollars to grassroots groups focused on gun-violence prevention. But The Inquirer has reported that results have been mixed, and that some of the nonprofits were unable to deliver or improperly managed the funds.

Parker emphasized that programs her administration funds will “have accountability” and that it’s essential the money goes to “people who are actually doing the work.”

“There are some people who think that this is a vehicle to get rich,” she said. “They will not do that on the Parker dime.”

Parker also said Tuesday that her administration intends to expand a program called Philadelphia Taking Care of Business, which she spearheaded when she was a member of City Council. The initiative funds community-based nonprofits to sweep sidewalks and remove litter along commercial corridors.

» READ MORE: Cherelle Parker says she has a plan to address Philly’s litter problem. Here’s how she’d focus on business corridors.

The mayor said her administration will seek to scale the program to operate citywide and to include residential streets. The idea is to both clean the city and provide job opportunities — the program, she said, could serve as a pipeline to city jobs.

During a speech last week to the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Parker said that Seattle-based Amazon had agreed to donate $100,000 to the program’s expansion, and she implored other businesses to do the same.

Increasing the police budget was politically unpalatable to City Council as recently as 2020 amid the nationwide racial justice movement following the police murder of George Floyd.

But the mood in the city and the country has changed following a spike in gun violence, and city officials last year approved a $55 million boost to the department’s budget with little political blowback.

On Tuesday, Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel, who also sat in on the roundtable with gun-violence advocates, said his department would request funding for technological upgrades, specifically for homicide detectives.

And Parker suggested that her administration may seek an increase in funding to the department. During a conversation about resources the force needs to close more cases, Parker told the advocates: “When we go through the budget process and other people are shouting about investments, why we need to do this and why we need to do that, please don’t be silent.”

Asked to clarify afterward, Parker recalled activists who advocated in 2020 to reduce funding to the police department. She said she’s listening to “mothers who have lost children to violence and those crimes have never been solved.”

“They talk about the volume of cases, and [the] supports and services needed to keep a cold case alive,” Parker said. “Detectives need cell phones, detectives need access to computers and other technology to be efficient and effective to solve more crimes. That’s something we need to take into consideration.”