The soaring rhetoric of campaign trails often meets the hard realities of governance once candidates take office. Competing demands, limited budgets and City Council’s own priorities can make for a challenging first year for any new mayor.
Back in March 2023, when Cherelle Parker was a candidate in the Democratic primary, Grid published her responses to our sustainability-focused questionnaire. We did the same in November as she faced off against Republican David Oh in the general election.
Now, a year into her administration, we followed up with another set of questions to see how her policies have taken shape. Mayor Parker took a team approach to responding: she answered two of our questions directly and had key members of her administration address others. Susan Slawson (Philadelphia Parks & Recreation), Elizabeth H. Lankenau (Office of Sustainability), and Carlton Williams (Office of Clean and Green Initiatives) each provided responses related to their respective departments. Here’s what they sent back to Grid.
What do you consider to be your administration’s most significant environmental accomplishments in its first year?
Cherelle Parker, Mayor of Philadelphia: By establishing an overall vision for Philadelphia to be the safest, cleanest and greenest big city in the nation with economic opportunity for all, I created a framework that all City departments are now using to develop strategies and action plans.
Creating the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives and our One Philly, United City Citywide Cleaning Program, is another accomplishment. I am so proud of this program that ran from June through August of 2024 and is an ongoing program, which provides district cleanings, including 40,060 blocks and commercial corridors and 5,868 vacant lots; we filled potholes on 7,902 blocks, removed graffiti on 2,858 blocks and towed 3,017 abandoned cars.
I pledged to plant 15,000 trees and committed nearly $2 million to the Philly Tree Plan.”
— Cherelle Parker, Mayor of Philadelphia
Our Energy Poverty Alleviation Strategy will help us reduce emissions in Philadelphia; the intergovernmental initiative Eastwick: From Recovery to Resilience is addressing flooding and other environment-related quality of life issues; our partnership with the Energy Authority and Energix Renewables flipped the switch on Adams Solar, that will allow the City’s energy portfolio to be powered by a mix of nearly 30% renewable energy.
I pledged to plant 15,000 trees and committed nearly $2 million to the Philly Tree Plan in the FY2025 budget for street tree maintenance and tree planting and care along commercial corridors under the PHL Taking Care of Business program.

Several areas of the city (Eastwick, Manayunk, Germantown) face chronic flooding, which is only expected to worsen with global warming. In your interview with Grid ahead of the mayoral primary in 2023, you said, “At a minimum, we need to have better zoning procedures in areas designated as floodplains.” What has your administration done — or is planning to do – to improve zoning procedures?
Elizabeth H. Lankenau, Director, Office of Sustainability: Over the past year, the City’s Flood Risk Management Task Force (FRMTF), coordinated by the Office of Sustainability (OOS), has continued to make progress towards several key initiatives to further flood risk management in Philadelphia under Mayor Parker’s leadership. The FRMTF convenes 15 City departments on a quarterly basis to foster collaboration in advancing climate adaptation, protecting communities, and promoting smart infrastructure and land use decisions in flood risk management. One of the most notable advancements this year is Mayor Parker expressing interest for Philadelphia’s entry into the Community Rating System (CRS), a voluntary incentive program by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This program rewards communities that exceed minimum floodplain management standards with flood insurance discounts for residents. Through entering the program, Philadelphia would commit to maintaining and improving our floodplain regulations. This would yield benefits to all residents, but especially those in our most flood-prone neighborhoods such as Manayunk, Germantown and Eastwick.
In Eastwick specifically, this year the City of Philadelphia has secured $2.2 million in funding to design and implement a near-term flood barrier, the first physical infrastructure project to mitigate flooding in Eastwick. This is an interim measure to protect vulnerable residents while a long-term flood resilience strategy is developed, currently underway through the Office of Sustainability, a committee of Eastwick residents and governmental partners.
In addition, the City of Philadelphia has been selected for further review for a Building Code Plus-Up Program, a grant under FEMA’s Building Resilience Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. If awarded, this would fund comprehensive assessments of existing and potential local floodplain management policies and programs, resulting in actionable recommendations to reduce risk to life and property and support future grant applications aimed at exceeding floodplain and flood risk management standards.

The Trust for Public Land’s 2024 Park-Score noted that Philadelphia continues to under-spend on parks compared to other cities. What is your plan to provide Philadelphians with a well-maintained, well-staffed, quality park system?
Susan Slawson, Commissioner, Parks & Recreation: Our plan to provide Philadelphians with a well-maintained, well-staffed, and high-quality park system will continue to center on collaboration and community engagement. We work strategically with over 140 community-led Park Friends Network groups to steward parks, coordinate cleanups, host events, raise funds and advocate for the city’s public park system.

Clean and Green has focused on cleaning up litter and illegally-dumped debris. What has your administration done — or is planning to do — to deter littering and illegal dumping?
Carlton Williams, Director, Office of Clean and Green Initiatives: The Office of Clean and Green Initiatives is working with Sanitation, CLIP [Community Life Improvement Program] and Commerce to expand 2024 initiatives. In 2025, we will be adding another illegal dumping crew to focus on cleaning our hardest hit littered and illegally-dumped areas of the city. We are also installing 100 new enforcement cameras to fight illegal dumping in 2025 and we look forward to expanding twice-per-week collections to other areas of the city such as North Philadelphia in the fall of 2025. In addition, we are increasing mechanical street sweeping to other litter-challenged neighborhoods and we are expanding our Taking Care of Business Clean Corridors Program to even more neighborhood business corridors. We have already begun year-round vacant lot cleaning with CLIP and PHS [Pennsylvania Horticultural Society] to maintain our open spaces in neighborhoods throughout.
These initiatives and more will continue to help meet Mayor Cherelle Parker’s vision of making Philadelphia the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation.

At the start of 2023, key City departments with environmental responsibilities faced severe staffing shortages: Parks & Recreation (PPR) had 29% of positions unfilled, the Water Department (PWD) 20%, Streets 18% and Public Health 17%. What actions has your administration taken to improve staffing, and what are the current vacancy rates for these departments?
Mayor Parker: I am proud of the work the City has done to implement a strategic approach to reduce vacancies. After inauguration, I made a public announcement that encouraged anyone interested in working for our new administration to send their résumés! In the past year, our Office of Human Resources launched a recruitment marketing campaign, leading to a 31% increase in job applications from 2023 to 2024. The new careers website, work.phila.gov, provides jobseekers with clear information on the hiring process and City employment, contributing to a 19% rise in new users on phila.gov/jobs.
To fill critical roles, we have also introduced temporary hiring bonuses of up to 20% for hard-to-fill positions and streamlined the hiring process by improving eligibility lists and reducing hiring timelines.
As a result, the Department of Public Health now has 19% of positions unfilled, Parks & Recreation has 28% unfilled, PWD has 15% unfilled and Streets has 15% unfilled. Our ongoing marketing efforts — including a new mobile recruitment vehicle targeting neighborhoods — aim to further reduce vacancies across all departments.