After a late-night session of negotiations, Mayor Cherelle Parker and Philadelphia City Council agreed to a budget.
ABOVE PHOTO: CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYATTA JOHNSON
By Denise Clay-Murray
You can always tell when we’re nearing the end of the Council session.
There are public hearings almost every day. Ceremonial things like street re-namings and proclamation presentations are being planned. The rumor mill kicks into overdrive.
And a lot of people who normally leave their jobs at 5 p.m. are in City Council chambers at midnight or thereabouts because the word “budget” is hanging in the air.
This year was no different as Philadelphia City Council passed the operating and capital budget plans for the 2025 fiscal year after a series of negotiations that went down to the wire. You see, Council’s last meeting before taking its summer break is next Thursday, and if the preliminary budget hadn’t been introduced and passed on Thursday, the final budget would be at least a week late in being passed.
This would have led to more than a few Jersey Shore beach houses going unoccupied.
(Now before anyone starts complaining, that was a joke.)
Mayor Cherelle Parker, Council President Kenyatta Johnson, and the other members of City Council held a press conference before Thursday’s regular Council meeting to announce that this wouldn’t be the case.
During the news conference, Parker told reporters that the $6.37 billion plan represents a first attempt to keep the promises that she made to Philadelphians when she was elected.
She also thanked Council, a group that Parker has been at cross purposes with more than a few times in her first six months in office, and its leadership for their cooperation.
“I have always said that I can’t do this alone,” Parker said. “With the partnership and the collaboration of this council president, Kenyatta Johnson, and the serious leadership that this council president displayed, we found a way to work together to get it done.”
Back when I was covering school districts, and by extension teacher strikes, I had a negotiator for the Pennsylvania State Education Association tell me that a contract is only good if both sides have to give something up.
That’s kind of the same for budgets.
In the case of this budget, Parker got quite a bit. The $100 million she wanted for wellness/triage/drug rehab/fill-in-the-blank spaces to put people in drug treatment and off of the street? She got it.
More “Clean and Green” money? She got it.
More money for police officers and public safety? She got that, too.
But Council got some of their priorities fulfilled as well. The Homestead Exemption is now $100,000 instead of just $80,000. The $1 million that the Mural Arts Program almost lost has been re-added.
If you’re a low-income homeowner, the budget includes a plan to freeze your property taxes at their current rate. And $19 million has been added to the Rental Assistance Program.
Also, $4.8 million has been added to the Violence Prevention Grants program, bringing it up to $29 million.
The package comes up for a final vote on June 13, and I don’t see there being any complication with its passage.
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