To hear Anthony Hudgins tell it, overtime fraud at the Philadelphia Fire Department is so brazen that some employees continued abusing the system even after officials started investigating them.
A paramedic was billing the city for overtime hours last May, Hudgins, the former first deputy fire commissioner, contends. But according to a federal lawsuit Hudgins filed Wednesday, there was one problem: That employee was luxuriating on a Norwegian Cruise at the time, not on the clock as a paramedic.
The alleged deception took place after The Inquirer reported that the city was investigating overtime abuse within the 2,800-member fire department and, at the same time, investigating Hudgins over a series of sexual harassment complaints made against him — claims Hudgins says were false and made by employees he’d reported for overtime abuse.
In his complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Hudgins accuses paramedics, the firefighters union president, and top city officials of defamation, subjecting him to a “bad faith” investigation, and ultimately forcing the department veteran of 31 years to lose his rank and take a $75,000 pay cut.
The dueling misconduct investigations have roiled the fire department since late 2024, and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration has declined to release the findings from either probe. Hudgins was demoted last fall.
Hudgins’ lawsuit claims that findings from the sexual harassment investigation conducted by the law firm Campbell Durrant cleared him of “verbal misconduct” and found that he had “hugged co-workers.” The complaint states that Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson told Hudgins that the investigators found: “You were just being you.”
The lawsuit did acknowledge that Parker’s administration found that Hudgins had violated the city’s sexual harassment policy and demoted him as a result. Women who lodged complaints against Hudgins said that his conduct included unwanted touching, inappropriate comments, and intimidation tactics, The Inquirer reported last year.
However, Hudgins contended in his lawsuit that the overtime review conducted by Inspector General Alexander DeSantis concluded that two of the women who’d accused him of misconduct were “proven fraudsters” who also recruited other women to file complaints.
Hudgins claimed that the overtime probe was completed in September. DeSantis told The Inquirer last month that the investigation is “still ongoing and may be for some time.” DeSantis declined further comment Thursday.
Because Parker’s administration and DeSantis have continued to decline to release the results of their investigations, it is difficult to confirm Hudgins’ account.
Parker’s administration declined to comment on the lawsuit.
According to the complaint, Hudgins called for an overtime review in fall 2024 after hearing that paramedic Jacqulyn Murphy had lodged a disproportionately high number of overtime shifts that year. While her peers averaged about 24 overtime payments, Murphy had accrued 238, more than 80% of them without the necessary approval forms, Hudgins claimed.
The department’s payroll supervisor, Marian Farris, rubber-stamped the overtime approvals, according to Hudgins’ complaint. Hudgins alerted Fire Commissioner Thompson.
But before he could finish his review, he asserts, Murphy and Farris retaliated by filing sexual harassment complaints against him and encouraging other female employees to do the same — including Tabitha Boyle, Christina Quinones, and Dana Jackson, who are also named as defendants in the lawsuit. Requests for their comments were not returned Thursday.
Murphy, now a defendant in the lawsuit, did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. Payroll records show she was the ninth highest overtime earner in the department in 2024, more than doubling her $94,549 base salary.
The city paid Campbell Durrant $30,000 to conduct interviews and investigate the claims against Hudgins, who was reassigned to remote work and, later, forced to take a leave of absence.
The city has taken The Inquirer to court to block the release of overtime records related to the overtime investigation, claiming their public disclosure would jeopardize the integrity of the probe led by The Office of the Inspector General, the city’s fraud prevention watchdog.
Hudgins, in his lawsuit, claims to have seen the results of that investigation. According to his complaint, the OIG produced its findings to the city and found that Murphy and Farris had both conspired to defraud the city.
According to the complaint, the OIG report stated Murphy had received an undisclosed sum of overtime pay and then “consistently” paid Farris via CashApp. The payments occurred biweekly for at least six months in 2024.
Farris left the department in March 2025. In a phone interview Thursday, she denied any scheme involving payments with Murphy. Investigators found CashApp receipts on Murphy’s email account, but Farris said those were innocent transactions.
“It ain’t a good thing to say, but Jackie was somebody I could borrow money from when I was in Atlantic City, or I could babysit her son for her or something like that,” Farris said. “I get CashApps from my mother. I’m not doing anything fraudulent with my mother.”
Hudgins’ complaint also accused Murphy of continuing to bilk the overtime system even after Farris left the department last year.
The fire department did not respond to a request for comment on the complaint. Michael Bresnan, president of Local 22 of the International Fire Fighters and Paramedics Union, was also named as a defendant in the suit. He declined to comment Thursday.
Per the complaint, Hudgins received a phone call from Thompson in July, who told him the law firm found no wrongdoing and that he could return to work, saying, essentially:
“Good news! You’re coming back to work. You were just being you.”
Staff writer Samantha Melamed contributed to this article.
Philadelphia Councilmember Jeffery “Jay” Young introduced a bill at the last City Council meeting of 2025 to ban residential development from the area around former Hahnemann University Hospital.
The proposal covers properties near Broad and Race Streets with owners that include Drexel University, Iron Stone Real Estate Partners, and Brandywine Realty Trust.
But only one known residential project slated for the area is covered by the bill: Dwight City Group’s proposal to redevelop the Hahnemann Hospital patient towers into hundreds of apartments.
If enacted by City Council, which returns on Jan. 22, the bill could have stopped that redevelopment.
But on Dec. 24, Dwight City Group secured a zoning permit for 222-48 N. Broad St. to builda 361-unit apartment building — far larger than the original plan — with space for commercial use on the first floor.
With that permit secured, the project could move forward regardless of whetherYoung’sbill is enacted.
Dwight City Group, however, says they are concentrating on ongoing conversations with Young.
“We are working along with Councilman Young and the community to ensure that this project meets the needs and goals of the district,” said Judah Angster, CEO of Dwight City Group.
The permits show some changes to the original plan. In interviews last year, the developer said the plan contained 288 units and that ground-floor commercial was unlikely.
Young said the proposed housing ban is about preserving jobs by allowing only commercial development at the former hospital site.
“As the city continues to look for ways to incentivize development, we need to ensure jobs and economic opportunities are at the forefront, with engagement from all stakeholders,” Young said in an email. “We look forward to working [with] all stakeholders as this legislation moves through the process.”
Young’s bill confused and outraged manyobservers as a blatant example of spot zoning, in which legislation is used to help or hurt a particular project.
But the tradition of “councilmanic prerogative” would likely guarantee its passage because other Council members are unlikely to vote against a bill that affects only one district.
Nevertheless, the housing and transit advocacy group 5th Square has begun a campaign against the legislation and issued a petition earlier this week calling for its withdrawal.
“The site on Broad and Race Street lies on top of an express subway stop and benefits from proximity to Center City jobs, shops, and cultural amenities,” the petition reads. “Since the shuttering of Hahnemann in 2019, the site currently provides little value to Philadelphians or tax dollars to the city despite its central location.”
Two new schools are coming to the Philadelphia School District.
Both schools, a K-8 and a high school,district officials said Wednesday, will have resources to help eliminate long-standing achievement and opportunity gaps for kids from underresourced communities.
They’ll be part of the “North Philadelphia Promise Zone,” Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. announced. Watlington said they would be the first schools in the United States to replicate the success of the acclaimed Harlem Children’s Zone, with the blessing of its founder, Geoffrey Canada,who pioneered a model that takes a birth-to-career approach to tackling generational poverty.
Watlington said the schoolswould be “true year-round schools.” They would bring a new approach to the new Philadelphia public schools, where prior attempts to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone blueprint have shown mixed results.
Harlem Children’s Zone runs charters in New York City, but the proposed Philadelphiaschools will be run by the district using the organization’s educational model,which includes extra resources and a longer school day and school year, as well as extensive social service supports.
Members of the West Philadelphia Marching Orange & Blue perform before Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker speaks on the state of Philadelphia schools during a gathering at Edison High School in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026.
“We’re going to be partners in opening these two state-of-the-art schools,” Watlington said at his state of the schools address, held Wednesday at Edison High School in North Philadelphia.
The district has big hopes for the schools, which officials said will be opened in existing Philadelphia school buildings — no new school structures will be involved.
“Not only will they get better, but get better faster than our district average. We’re going to make sure the school is staffed with the very best, most effective principals,” Watlington said. “We’re going to ensure that these schools are staffed with the very best, most effective teachers.”
They will be schools of choice, meaning parents can opt into having their children attend rather than basing enrollment on where students live.
The schools will also pull in Temple University; Watlington said that via the Temple Future Scholars program, “every single one of these graduates from this K-8 and high school” will be college-ready.
Many details were not clear Wednesday, including when the schools will open, what the year-round model will look like, the exact relationship with Harlem Children’s Zone, how the schools will be funded, and who will staff them. The district said it could not give more details immediately.
News of the new schools caught an important partner off guard. Arthur Steinberg, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said Watlington’s speech was the first he heard of the initiative.
“Any changes in working conditions must be negotiated with the PFT,” Steinberg said. “We will not agree to anything that requires members to work additional days or hours.”
Watlington said the K-8 school will open first, and he has tapped Aliya Catanch-Bradley, the respected principal of Bethune Elementary in North Philadelphia, to lead the efforts to open the North Philadelphia Promise Zone schools.
Catanch-Bradley said it was too soon to discuss the particulars about the schools, which will be built with significant community involvement.
But, she said, North Philadelphia is a prime location for the cradle-to-career Harlem Children’s Zone model.
“We know that it’s not a food desert, because food… deserts are natural,” she said of North Philadelphia. “It is food insecure by design, right? And so, we now know that you have a resource drought there, to which it’s going to take an intentional pouring of all types of resources to wrap around a community, to help expand and become a very successful ecosystem.”
Philadelphia district officials will take time to study Harlem Children’s Zone, “but also to understand the landscape of Philadelphia, what needs to be augmented to echo the needs of this community,” Catanch-Bradley said.
Mayor Cherelle L.Parker campaignedon the promise of year-round schools, and her administration has put extended-day, extended-year programs into 40 district and charter schools. But those programs are essentially before- and after-care and summer camps, paid for with city funds and offered free to 12,000 students, rather than traditional year-round education.
Harlem Children’s Zone schools have longer school days and longer school years. It’s not clear what form the proposed North Philadelphia Promise Zone schools might take, and how these efforts would differ from prior attempts around the country to replicate the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone. Former President Barack Obama in 2010 highlighted the model and selected20 communities, including Philadelphia, to start “Promise Neighborhood” programs that would improve access to housing, jobs, and education. Those efforts were met with varying degrees of success, and no schools opened in Philadelphia.
Watlington’s new-school announcement capped a two-plus-hour, pep-rally-style event where he and others underscored progress the district has made in the past year — and since the superintendent came to Philadelphia four years ago.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker (left), Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. (center), and school board president Reginald Streater during a ceremony on the state of Philadelphia schools at Edison High School on Wednesday.
Other news from the state of Philadelphia schools event
Parker, who led off the event, said she was pleased with the state of schools.
“The school district has continued to make steady and meaningful progress,” Parker said. “Test scores are rising, attendance is rising. Dropout rates are declining, and those gains are real, and they reflect what happens when we invest in our students.”
Parker emphasized her desire to have the city take over a list of abandoned district buildings. The school board took the first step in December, voting to authorize Watlington and his administration to begin negotiating with the city to do just that.
Parker said thatsome of the buildings have been vacant for as long as 30 years. The district has not yet released a list of buildings to consider transferring, but the mayor said it includes at least 20 former schools.
“I want you to be clear about what my goal and objective is,” Parker said. “It’s not OK for me to have 20, 21 buildings consistently vacant, red on the school district’s balance sheet, generating no revenue and not at all working at their best and highest use. We’re going to find a way to do what has never been done in the city of Philadelphia before — develop a plan for those persistently vacant buildings.”
Watlington alsoran down a laundry list of accomplishments, including ongoing fiscal stability and improvementson the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card.
He said the district would “retire” its structural deficit completely by 2029-30 though declined to give details.
He and Reginald Streater, president of the city’s school board, said the district still has a ways to go but has made strides. More than half of all district students still fail to meet grade-level standards in reading and math.
But, Watlington said, “I can assure you we’re making progress. We’re going to double down. More for our children, not less. More opportunities, more access, more exposure, more good things to come in 2026.”
After being sworn in to her first full four-year term, City Controller Christy Brady on Monday vowed to examine spending related to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s signature housing program and to probe whether Philadelphia is maximizing economic opportunities at its waterfront and port.
“In my next term, I will be expanding my oversight of the mayor’s housing program to ensure every dollar borrowed is used as intended and is properly accounted for,” Brady said of Parker’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E., initiative during a swearing-in ceremony at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.
“And with our waterfront and ports being one of our strongest economic assets, we will be focusing on efforts to ensure they can deliver the greatest financial impact,” Brady said.
Holt denies that it has engaged in anticompetitive conduct, and a company spokesperson said growth is “vitally important to the future of our business and our region.”
“Holt Logistics has been a key driver of the Port’s growth over the last decade, as witnessed by the fact that in the last month alone, two new lines of business have chosen to call Philadelphia, largely because of the service they receive,” spokesperson Kevin Feeley said.
Additionally, Brady promised to help prevent fraud in city spending related to this year’s Semiquincentennial festivities.(Parker has pledged to dole out $100 million, focusing on neighborhood-based programming across the city, for major events in 2026, including the nation’s 250th birthday.)
And in her capacity as chair of the Philadelphia Gas Commission, Brady said she would “conduct a thorough review of PGW’s operations.”
Brady also sits on the city Board of Pensions and Retirement and said she would “collaborate with [City] Council to adjust benefit structures.”
The controller’s office audits city agencies and investigates allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse.
Brady was appointed by former Mayor Jim Kenney to serve as acting controller in late 2022 when Rebecca Rhynhart resigned to run for mayor. Brady in 2023 won a special election to serve the remaining two years of Rhynhart’s term.
Seeking her first four-year term, Brady ran unopposed in the May 2024 Democratic primary and easily defeated Republican Ari Patrinos in the November general election.She was sworn in Monday with District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is beginning his third term, and city judges who were on the ballot last year.
Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Natasha Taylor-Smith introduced Brady and administered her oath of office.
Many past controllers have had less-than-friendly relationships with the mayors they served alongside, a natural dynamic for an office tasked with investigating the executive branch. The post has also served as a springboard for many politicians with higher aspirations.
Rhynhart, for instance, repeatedly clashed with Kenney by publishing critical reports on city accounting practices and a lack of accountability in spending on anti-violence groups. She touted those probes to brand herself as a reformer while running in the 2023 mayor‘s race, finishing second behind Parker in the Democratic primary.
Brady’s background and leadership style are different. She has spent three decades rising through the ranks in the controller’s office and was deputy controller in charge of the audit division before being appointed to the top job. And since becoming controller, she has made a point of working collaboratively with Parker’s administration.
Dignitaries and elected officers before start of 2026 Inaugural Ceremony at the Kimmel Center Performing Arts on Monday.
“As promised, I hit the ground running. We’ve achieved far more than many thought was possible,” Brady said. “A key to that success has been collaboration with Mayor Parker and Council President [Kenyatta] Johnson to ensure that our recommendations resulting from the findings in each report, review, and audit that we issue are implemented.”
Parker acknowledged their collaboration in her remarks during Monday’s ceremony.
“Controller Brady, thank you for not being wrapped up in politics and staying focused on the work of the controller’s office,” Parker said. “You do it by communicating with our office. No ‘gotcha’ moments.”
In her relatively short political career, Brady has received strong support from influential groups in local politics, especially the building trades unions and the Democratic City Committee. On Monday, she gave shout-outs to numerous politicos, including former U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, who chairs the city’s Democratic Party and is not related to her.
“I want to thank the people who have made this possible, including my friends in labor, Congressman Bob Brady, my friends in the Democratic Party, the business community, and all the voters who put their trust in me,” Christy Brady said.
Philadelphia is on track to record the lowest number of fatal overdoses in nearly a decade in 2025, according to preliminary state data.
State officials reported 747 overdose deaths in the city as of Dec. 23. The city last recorded fewer than1,000 deaths in 2016, when 907 people died of overdoses.
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Likewise, overdose deaths are dropping in Pennsylvania, with a 29% decline in deaths reported statewide between 2023 and 2024, according to preliminary data from the state.
Preliminary data for 2025 indicate that deaths are also on track to decline again across the state, with 2,178 overdoses reported as of Dec. 23, according to state data. In all of 2024, the state recorded 3,340 overdose deaths.
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City officials in Philadelphia said there are slight differences in how the state and the city report overdose data and could not comment extensively on the state figures. But the city’s own data also show dramatic drops in deaths in the last several years.
As recently as 2022, deaths in the city had soared to their highest-ever rate. But they decreased slightly in 2023.
Citing preliminary data from 2024, Philly Stat 360, a city-run database that tracks quality-of-life metrics, reported 1,064 overdose deaths — a 19% decrease in fatal overdoses from the year before. The city has not yet released its own statistics for 2025.
“My first reaction to hearing these numbers is absolute joy,” said Keli McLoyd, the director of the Philadelphia Overdose Response Unit (ORU). “With that said, the number should be zero. Every overdose is preventable. Every single one of those lives lost is a person.”
State officials said their work to expand overdose prevention efforts and ease entry to treatment has contributed to the dramatic drops in deaths. Still, they said, there is more work to be done.
“Even with the overall decreases, we are still losing too many people — mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, grandchildren — to overdose,” said Stephany Dugan, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.
She added that all Pennsylvanians “deserve equal and equitable access” to addiction treatment.
Decreases in overdoses in Philadelphia
Discerning the cause of the dramatic drops in overdose deaths can be difficult, city officials say.
“We have to acknowledge that it’s a huge, huge change, and so we really are hopefully doing something right. But I think it’s going to be very hard, if not impossible, to say that one thing resulted in this massive reduction in fatal overdose deaths,” McLoyd said.
Still, efforts at the state and local levels to increase access to naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug, likely made a difference, she said.
A number of local advocates in the addiction medicine field have speculated that there is still much to learn about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected overdose rates, said Daniel Teixeira da Silva, the director of the Division of Substance Use Prevention and Harm Reduction at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
“When we look at the [overdose] increases after 2016, leading up to COVID, we can tie that to the introduction of fentanyl to the [drug] supply,” he said Monday, referring to the synthetic opioid behind most of the city’s fatal overdoses.
“When you look at the increases from 2020 to 2022 — this is where I just don’t think we know enough yet. It’s hard to say COVID didn’t impact [deaths]. We look at what was going on at the time, contributors to more risky substance use such as people losing employment, the isolation,” Teixeira da Silva said.
Likewise, he said, policy changes that came about during the pandemic, such as easing some restrictions around opioid addiction medications, could be contributing to a drop in deaths now.
“Maybe we’re seeing benefits of the policies enacted during COVID,” he said.
A changing drug landscape
On Philly Stat 360, city officials said fentanyl still drives nearly all of the opioid overdose deaths in the city.
But about 70% of deaths involved a stimulant like cocaine or methamphetamine in 2024. And about half of the city’s fatal overdoses that year involved both stimulants and opioids.
Taking stock of the drop in overdose deaths, city officials noted the success of a 2024 program at the ORU to deliver naloxone, the opioid overdose-reversing drug sold under the brand name Narcan, to households in neighborhoods seeing a high number of overdoses.
They included neighborhoods in North Philadelphia, where overdose deaths had risen over the last several years. Across the city, Black and Hispanic communities had seen high rises in overdoses — but neighbors often reported receiving fewer resources to address them.
Workers assigned to the naloxone initiative knocked on 100,000 doors offering the medication and access to addiction treatment. In some neighborhoods, up to 88% of neighbors who answered their doors accepted some kind of resource from staffers, according to a city report on the program. McLoyd also helmed an effort to ensure all city fire stations had naloxone on hand.
“We’re sharing those messages that this is a tool for everyone, not just people who use drugs or people who love those who use drugs,” since some people may hide their addiction from others, she said.
This year, the city launched another campaign to educate residents about the risk of heart disease from stimulant use. Eighty percent of overdose deaths among Black Philadelphians in 2023 involved a stimulant, and about half of the Black Philadelphians who died of an overdose between 2019 and 2022 had a history of cardiovascular disease.
“We see opioid-stimulant [overdose deaths] decreasing, but stimulant-only [overdoses] being really persistent,” Teixeira da Silva said. “Stimulant overdoses are not reversed by Narcan,” so it is important to help vulnerable residents understand the specific harms caused by stimulants.
As overdoses decrease in the general population, McLoyd said, it is crucial to maintain outreach efforts toward groups that have seen rising overdoses in recent years, like pregnant people and teens in the juvenile justice system.
“Within certain populations, overdoses are still disproportionately high. We want to develop programs that speak specifically to those populations,” she said.
City officials have also hailed the Riverview Wellness Center, a 234-bed recovery home that offers supportive services to people who have completed a 30-day stay in inpatient treatment.
But Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration has faced criticism from advocates for people in addiction over her decision last yearto slash funding for syringe exchanges. Critics have also decried City Council legislation that regulates mobile medical services for people with addiction, requiring permits to offer care and limiting operating hours and locations in some neighborhoods.
Teixeira da Silva said that the city is using the legislation to more effectively coordinate care for people with addiction. He said his division has been involved in the new permitting process for mobile services to “get them approved as fast as possible to ensure there isn’t a gap in access.”
Statewide initiatives
Across Pennsylvania, the state’s Overdose Prevention Program handed out more than 415,000 doses of naloxone in the first six months of 2025, said Dugan, the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs spokesperson.
Those doses helped reverse more than 6,100 overdoses, Dugan said earlier this month.
The state also distributed 437,000 test strips to help drug users detect fentanyl and xylazine. The animal tranquilizer contaminated much of Philadelphia’s illicit opioid supply starting at the beginning of the decade and can cause severe skin wounds that sometimes lead to amputation.
Authorities credited efforts to increase access to treatment in rural counties and to decrease wait times for addiction treatment, implementing a “warm handoff” program that allows patients to transfer directly from hospitals to addiction treatment.
More than 22,000 Pennsylvanians were offered addiction treatment from hospitals in the first 10 months of 2025. Nearly 60% of people who received referrals accepted them, state officials said.
Advocates say that the state’s focus on programs to prevent overdoses has paid off.
“I’m really impressed and grateful for the state and their investment in harm-reduction programs,” said Sarah Laurel, who heads the Philadelphia-based addiction outreach organization Savage Sisters.
But as the drug supply changes, she said, it is vital for health officials to collect more data on other harms of drug use besides overdoses.
For example, medetomidine, another powerful animal tranquilizer not approved for human use, has supplanted xylazine in Philadelphia’s illicit opioid supply.
It causes intense withdrawal that has flooded emergency rooms with patients suffering from dangerous spikes in blood pressure and other heart complications. Some doctors have raised concerns that patients undergoing medetomidine withdrawal risk brain damage from high blood pressure.
Medetomidine was detected in about 15% of all fatal overdoses in Philadelphia between May 2024 and May 2025, according to preliminary city data obtained by The Inquirer this fall.
“It’s great they’re distributing naloxone at the rate they are. However, we have not really seen a ton of data on the complications that this polychemical substance wave is causing for people,” Laurel said.
“It’s a big area where we can look into the people we’re serving and the way their lives are being impacted by drugs.”
Teixeira da Silva said that city officials successfully pushed federal officials this fall to institute new medical billing codes for xylazine use and related amputations, a crucial step to allow hospitals to better track harms from the drug. They are hoping to do the same for medetomidine and its withdrawal symptoms.
“I definitely agree that we need a broader perspective in terms of the harms caused by drug use beyond death,” he said. “Of course, death is the worst harm. That has to be a metric that we continue to monitor and work toward zero.”
For nearly a decade, city transportation and public safety officials have taken part in Vision Zero, an ambitious, nationwide program designed to help communities reduce the number of lives lost to traffic collisions.
In recent years, City Hall has narrowed lanes, installed red-light cameras, and built speed humps in roadways in an effort to slow traffic and keep pedestrians safe.
According to an analysis by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, the city has suffered 94 fatalities this year. That’s a 39% decrease from the 155 Philadelphians who lost their lives in 2020.
According to the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia’s “Traffic Victims Report,” pedestrian fatalities this year are down 39% compared with 2024.
City officials, including Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, deserve credit for swimming against this national tide. While there is little City Hall can do to regulate vehicle size, officials have used the tools that are available to reduce fatalities.
The city’s biggest success story is Roosevelt Boulevard. Once dubbed one of the most dangerous roads in America, the Boulevard is no longer even the most dangerous corridor in Philadelphia (Broad Street now holds that dubious distinction). The change is largely a result of the installation of speed cameras, which officials credit with saving around 50 lives since they were installed in 2020. The cameras have now been installed for Broad Street, as well.
Additionally, the Parker administration has placed a welcome focus on safety around schools and playgrounds. Given that an average of about five Philadelphia children are struck by a vehicle every week, those efforts should be accelerated. After some initial consternation, City Council approved speed cameras for seven school zones this year. If those programs show success, they should be expanded.
An automated speed enforcement camera is mounted on North Broad Street at Arch Street.
So, too, should support from the police. In an interview with Philadelphia Magazine, Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel responded to a plea for more traffic enforcement with a reference to ongoing staffing issues, saying that his officers must prioritize the most serious calls. With 100 Philadelphians dying in collisions each year, citations and arrests for traffic violations should remain a point of emphasis.
The plan to reduce traffic fatalities also requires some assistance from Harrisburg. City officials would like to set their own speed limits, arguing that state rules that are designed for rural and suburban communities don’t work in dense, urban areas with heavy pedestrian traffic.
There is still much to be done when it comes to keeping pedestrians in the city safe, but Philadelphians can take comfort in knowing that the tools currently in place are doing what they’re intended to do — save lives.
Way back in 2022, when Philadelphians gathered on an abandoned pier to watch a man eat a rotisserie chicken, folks on social media began to wonder: “Is Philadelphia a real place?”
Sure, that perception has a lot to do with an unbelievable event that actually happened in the suburbs (Delco never fails to carry its weight), but Philly also saw its fair share of the bizarre this year, too.
As we prepare for what may be one of the most important (and hopefully weirdest!) years in modern Philadelphia history, let’s take some time to look back on the peculiar stories from across the region that punctuated 2025.
Five uh-oh
Kevon Darden was sworn in as a part-time police officer for Collingdale Borough on Jan. 12 and hit the ground running, landing his first arrest just four days later.
The only problem? It was his own.
Pennsylvania State Police charged Darden with terroristic threats and related offenses for an alleged road rage incident in 2023 in which he’s accused of pointing a gun at a driver on the Blue Route in Ridley Township. At the time of the alleged incident Darden was employed as an officer at Cheyney University.
A Pennsylvania State Police vehicle. The agency provided two clean background checks for a Collingdale police officer this year, only to arrest him four days after he started the job.
Here’s the thing — it was state police who provided not one but two clean background checks on Darden to Collingdale officials before he was hired. An agency spokesperson told The Inquirer troopers had to wait on forensic evidence tests and approval from the District Attorney’s Office before filing charges.
Darden subsequently resigned and is scheduled for trial next year in Delaware County Court.
For the Birds
The Eagles’ second Super Bowl win provided a wellspring of wacky — and sometimes dicey — moments on and off the field early this year.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker started the championship run off strong by going viral for misspelling the most popular chant in the city as “E-L-G-S-E-S” during a news conference. Her mistake made the rounds on late night talk shows and was plastered onto T-shirts, beer coozies, and even a license plate. If you think the National Spelling Bee is brutal, you’ve never met Eagles fans.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts at the line of scrimmage during the fourth quarter of the NFC divisional playoff at Lincoln Financial Field on Jan. 19. The Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Los Angeles Rams 28 to 22.
Then there was the snowy NFC divisional playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams at Lincoln Financial Field; continued drama around the Tush Push (which resulted in Dude Wipes becoming an official sponsor of the team); and Cooper DeJean’s pick-six, a gift to himself and us on his 22nd birthday that helped the Birds trounce the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX.
As soon as the Eagles won with Jalen Hurts as MVP, Philadelphians let loose, flooding the streets like a drunken green tsunami. Fans scaled poles and tore them down; danced on bus shelters, medic units, and trash trucks; partied with Big Foot, Ben Franklin, and Philly Elmo; and set a bonfire in the middle of Market Street.
Eagles fans party on trash trucks in the streets of Center City after the Birds win in Super Bowl LIX against the Chiefs on Feb. 9.
Finally, there was the parade, a Valentine’s Day love letter to the Eagles from Philadelphia. Among the more memorable moments was when Birds general manager Howie Roseman was hit in the head with a can of beer thrown from the crowd. He took his battle scar in pride, proclaiming from the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum: “I bleed for this city.”
As we say around here, love Hurts.
Throngs of Birds fans lined the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for the Eagles Super Bowl Parade on Feb. 14.
A $40 million goodbye
As far as inanimate objects go, few have experienced more drama in recent Philly history than the SS United States, the 73-year-old, 990-foot luxury liner that was docked for nearly three decades on the Delaware River waterfront.
Supporters spent more than $40 million on rent, insurance, and other measures to keep the ship in Philly with the hopes of returning it to service or at least turning it into a venue. But a rent dispute with the owners of the pier finally led a judge to order the SS United States Conservancy, which owned the vessel, to seek an alternate solution.
Workers on the Walt Whitman Bridge watch from above as the SS United States is pulled by tug boats on the Delaware River.
And so in February, with the help of five tugboats, the ship was hauled out of Philly to prepare it to become the world’s largest artificial reef off the coast of Okaloosa County, Fla.
If the United States has to end somewhere, Florida feels like an apt place.
The ‘Delco Pooper’
While the Eagles’ Tush Push was deemed legal by NFL owners this year, a Delaware County motorist found that another kind of tush push most definitely is not after she was arrested for rage pooping on the hood of a car during a roadway dispute in April.
Captured on video by a teen who witnessed the rear-ending, the incident quickly went viral and put a stain on Delco that won’t be wiped away anytime soon.
Christina Solometo, who was dubbed the “Delco Pooper” on social media, told Prospect Park Police she got into a dispute with another driver, whom she believed began following her. Solometo claimed when she got out of her car the other driver insulted her and so she decided to dump her frustrations on their hood.
A private security guard holds the door open for alleged “Delco Pooper” Christina Solometo following her preliminary hearing Monday at Prospect Park District Court.
“Solometo said, ‘I wanted to punch her in the face, but I pooped on her car instead and went home,’” according to the affidavit.
I’ve written a lot of stories about Delco in my time, but this may be the most absurd.
Hopefully, she won’t be clogging up the court system anymore.
The Delco pope
Delco is large, it contains multitudes, and never was that more clear than when two weeks after the Delco Pooper case broke, a Delco pope was elected.
OK, so Pope Leo XIV is technically a native of Chicago, but he attended undergrad at Villanova University — which, yes, technically straddles Delco and Montgomery County — but Delco’s had a tough year so I’m gonna give it this one.
This video screen grab shows Pope Leo XIV wearing a Villanova University hat gifted to him during a meeting with an Italian heritage group.
Born Robert Prevost, Pope Leo is the first U.S. pope in history and also a citizen of Peru. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Villanova in 1977 and an honorary doctor of humanities from the university in 2014.
Center City Sips, the Wednesday Center City happy hour program, long ago earned a reputation as a rite of passage for 20-somethings who are still figuring out how to limit their intake and want to do so in business casual attire.
Things seemed to calm down after the pandemic, but then Philadelphians took Sips to another level and a whole new place this year — the streets.
Videos showed hundreds of people partying in the streets of Midtown Village on Wednesday nights this summer. Granted, the parties look far more calm than when sports fans take over Philly after a big win, but the nearby bar owners who participate in the Sips program said their places sat empty as people brought their own alcohol to drink.
Jason Evenchik, who owns Time, Vintage, Garage, and other bars, told The Inquirer that “No one is inside, and it’s mayhem outside.”
“Instead, he claimed, people are selling alcohol out of their cars and bringing coolers to make their own cocktails. At one point on June 11,Evenchik said, a Tesla blocked a crosswalk while a man made piña coladas with a pair of blenders hooked up to the car,” my colleague Beatrice Forman wrote.
In no way am I condoning this behavior, but those two sentences above may be my among favorite this year. Who thinks to bring a blender — with a car hookup — to make piña coladas at an unauthorized Center City street party on a Wednesday night?
Philly.
Getting trashed
Philadelphians experienced a major city workers strike this summer when Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and AFSCME District Council 33 couldn’t agree on a new contract for the union’s nearly 9,000 members.
Residents with trash arrive at garbage dump site at Caldera Road and Red Lion Road in northeast Philadelphia during the AFSCME District Council 33 workers strike in July.
As a result, things got weird. Dead bodies piled up at the Medical Examiner’s Office; a striking union member was arrested for allegedly slashing the tires of a PGW vehicle; and for eight days in the July heat, garbage heaped up all across Philadelphia. The city set up temporary trash drop-off sites, which often overflowed into what were nicknamed “Parker piles,” but that also set off a firestorm about whether using the sites constituted crossing a picket line.
Wawa Welcome America July Fourth concert headliners LL Cool J and Jazmine Sullivan even pulled out of the show in support of striking workers, resulting in a fantastic “Labor Loves Cool J” meme.
It was all like something out of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In fact, the gang predicted a trash strike in the 2012 episode “The Gang Recycles Their Trash.”
The real strike lasted eight days before a contract was reached. In true Philly form, AFSCME District Council 33 president Greg Boulware told The Inquirer “nobody’s happy.”
A large pile of trash collects at a city drop-off site during the AFSCME workers strike this summer.
97-year-old gives birth to 16 kids
A local nonagenarian couple became national shellebrities this year for welcoming seven babies in April and nine more in August, proving that age ain’t nothing but a number, as long as you’re a tortoise.
Western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoise Mommy, and male Abrazzo, left, are shown on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, at the Philadelphia Zoo in Philadelphia, Pa. The hatchlings’ parents, female Mommy and male Abrazzo, are the Zoo’s two oldest animals, each estimated to be around 100 years old.
Mommy and Abrazzo, Western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoises who reside at the Philadelphia Zoo, made history with their two clutches, becoming the first pair of the critically endangered species in the zoo’s 150-year history to hatch eggs and the first to do so in any accredited zoo since 2019.
Mommy is also the oldest known first-time Galapagos tortoise mom in the world, so it’s safe to say she doesn’t have any time or patience for shenanigans. She’s got 16 heroes in a half shell to raise.
Western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoise egg hatchling.
Phillies Karen
Taking candy from a baby is one thing — babies don’t need candy anyway — but taking a baseball from a kid at a Phillies game is a deed so foul and off base it’s almost unimaginable.
And yet, that’s exactly what happened at a Phillies-Marlins game in September, when a home run from Harrison Bader landed in the stands and a dad ran from his seat to grab it and give it to his son. A woman who was sitting near where the ball landed marched over to the dad, berated him, and demanded the ball be given her. Taken aback, the father reached into his son’s baseball glove and turned the ball over.
The entire scene was caught on camera and the woman, with her Kate Gosselin-esque hairdo, was immediately dubbed “Phillies Karen” by flabbergasted fans.
While the act technically happened at the Marlins stadium in Miami, Fla., it captured the minds and memes of Philadelphians so much that it deserves inclusion on this list. Phillies Karen has made her way onto T-shirts and coffee mugs, inspired skits at a Savannah Bananas game and the MLB Awards, and she even became a popular Halloween costume.
To this day, “Phillies Karen” remains unidentified, so it’s a safe bet she lives in Florida, where she’ll have better luck with alligators than with people here.
Institutional intrigue
Drama at area institutions this year had Philadelphians sipping tea like we were moms on Christmas morning, and sometimes, left us shaking our fists in the air like we were dads putting up tangled lights.
David Adelman with the Philadelphia 76ers makes a statement at a press conference in the Mayor’s Reception Room in January regarding the Sixers changing directions on the controversial Center City arena. At left is mayor Parker, at right City Council President Kenyatta Johnson and Josh Harris, Sixers owner.
It started early in January, when the billionaire owners of the Sixers surprised the entire city by announcing the team would stay at the South Philly sports complex instead of building their own arena on Market East. The decision came after two years of seemingly using the city, its politicians, and its people as pawns in their game.
Workers gathered outside World Cafe Live before a Town Hall meeting with management in July.
In June, workers staged a walkout at World Cafe Live due to what they claimed was “an unacceptable level of hostility and mismanagement” from its new owners, including its then-CEO, Joseph Callahan. Callahan — who said the owners inherited $6 million in debt and that he wanted to use virtual reality to bolster its revenue — responded by firing some of the workers and threatening legal action. Today, the future of World Cafe Live remains unclear. Callahan stepped down as CEO in September (but remains chairman of the board), the venue’s liquor license expired, and its landlord, the University of Pennsylvania, wants to evict its tenant, with a trial scheduled for January.
Signage at the east entrance to the Philadelphia Art Museum reflects the rebrand of the institution, which was formerly known as the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Finally, late this year at the Philadelphia Art Museum, things got more surreal than a Salvador Dalí painting, starting with an institutional rebrand that surprised some board members, didn’t land well with the public, and resulted in a lot of PhART jokes. In November, museum CEO Sasha Suda was fired following an investigation by an outside law firm that focused, in part, on increases to her salary, a source told The Inquirer. Suda’s lawyer called it a “a sham investigation” and Suda quickly sued her former employer, claiming that “her efforts to modernize the museum clashed with a small, corrupt, and unethical faction of the board intent on preserving the status quo.”
Nobody knows where all of this will go, but it’s likely to have more drama than a Caravaggio.
And this year, Parker let go of three top city officials amid ordeals fraught with internal drama for the administration.
Despite those tribulations, the big-picture news for the city has been positive, and the mayor can credibly say she has made progress on her oft-repeated campaign slogan of making Philadelphia “the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation with access to economic opportunity for all.”
"We are doing the best we can with what we have," Parker said in an interview Friday. “Nobody’s resting. We’re not having a party and celebrating because we know we have a lot more work to do.”
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The year encapsulated Philadelphia’s reality under Parker’s administration: big wins on major goals despite signs of tension in City Hall.
“She’s getting some pushback, but statistically, in terms of the crime rate, the city is doing better,” said David Dunphy, a Pennsylvania Democratic political consultant and lobbyist. “In terms of the biggest issues that voters had in the last election, it’s inarguable there’s been vast improvement.”
“There’s a general sense Philadelphia is coming back and making a rebound [following the pandemic], and she gets a lot of good will from the sense she enjoys being mayor,” Dunphy said.
Here are six takeaways from Parker’s second year in office.
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Big wins, with caveats
Parker made public safety the central themeof her 2023 mayoral campaign. And two years in, the news could hardly be better.
The Police Department as of last week had recorded 212 homicides in 2025, and is on pace to close the year with the lowest level since 1966.
But it’s not just the reduction in violence.
Philadelphia’s poverty rate has dipped below 20%, and it no longer has the highest rate among the 10 largest U.S. cities. The city’s finances are in the best shape they have been in since the early 1990s fiscal crisis. Perhaps most shockingly, there even appears to be progress in Kensington, where Parker has pledged to end the neighborhood’s notorious open-air drug market.
Onedrug dealer told The Inquirer the city’s crackdown has cut his weekly revenue from about $1,500 to $400. And the city isexpanding its Riverview Wellness Village, a first-of-its-kind initiative from Parker’s administration to house and provide treatment for people in recovery.
There are plenty of caveats to all of those headline accomplishments. The decline in homicides began shortly before Parker took office. Philadelphia still has the lowest median income of the 10 biggest cities in the country. The city’s finances, buoyed by a growing economy, have been growing more stable for decades. And the Kensington drug market isn’t disappearing anytime soon.
Workers from Philadelphia’s Community Life Improvement Program clean the intersection of Kensington Avenue and Somerset Street on Jan. 22, 2025.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
But mayors are judged by how the city changes during their tenures. And so far, Parker is likely pleased with her progress on the most important measuring sticks.
“She communicated during the campaign and throughout the beginning of her term a set of priorities that everybody can repeat: the safe, clean, green, inclusive growth or opportunity for all,” said Pedro A. Ramos, a former city managing director who now leads the Philadelphia Foundation, a major philanthropy. “Two years in, I think any fair scorecard has got to give her pretty good grades.”
Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Strike highlighted Parker’s strengths and weaknesses
During the first major city worker strike in 40 years, the mayor stoodatop the Philadelphia Art Museum steps in sweltering heat as what were unofficially dubbed “Parker piles” of uncollected trash mounted around the city.
“I will not put the fiscal stability of the city of Philadelphia in jeopardy for no one,” Parker said, explaining her refusal to meet demands for bigger wage increases for the union representing trash collectors, 911 dispatchers, water treatment plant employees, and other blue-collar workers. “If that means I’m a one-term mayor, then so be it.”
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker discusses the AFSCME DC 33 municipal workers strike at a news conference at the Philadelphia Art Museum on Thursday, July 3, 2025.Kaiden J. Yu / Staff Photographer
But the strike was also the most divisive moment in Parker’s tenure, fuelingtensions within organized labor and leading to accusations that Parker didn’t care about the workers’ plight.
Teamsters Local 107 president Bill Hamilton said the mayor encouraged workers to cross picket lines and “should be ashamed of her actions and her words during this strike.”
“She doesn’t have any friends on my side of labor, I can tell you that,” he said.
Parker said that being at odds with labor was “abnormal” for her and that she was disappointed the strike led some people to believe she was not a strong supporter of organized labor.
”Was I disappointed? Yes, because it wasn’t reflective of my career and everything I had done," Parker said in the interview. “But I also respect the union.”
Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Parker’s don’t-poke-the-bear strategy with Trump
In August, the U.S. Department of Justice sent so-called sanctuary cities a letter threatening to cut off federal funding if they did not get in line with the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Like many other Democratic leaders, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu excoriated the Trump administration andpublished a scathing response to the DOJ.
But Parker said nothing. Her administration refused to release Philadelphia’s response to the DOJ letter and is still fighting an Inquirer request for the document under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, Parker has rarely if ever uttered the president’s name in public. Supporters sayher don’t-poke-the-bear approach has saved Philadelphia from Trump’s wrath and kept National Guard troops out of the city while theywere deployed to other major U.S. cities. Critics say it shows an unwillingness to stand tall during a dangerous moment in American history.
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Mayor Parker’s restraint with Trump is both calculation and gamble as the president escalates against blue cities
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has avoided overtly criticizing Trump, even as the president has sought to deploy troops to other American cities against the will of their Democratic mayors.
“We are living in actual fascism,” said City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, of the progressiveWorking Families Party. “It’s clear the mayor is being calculating. That is not the tactic I would take. I think we need to be more pronounced.”
Parker said her goal was to focus on delivering on her campaign promises without letting politics get in the way.
“If there were ever a time that the citizens of Philadelphia needed a mayor to stay laser-focused on doing everything we can with the scarce resources that we have … that time is now,” Parker said. “Some people won’t like it. That’s very unfortunate, but I have to lead in a way that’s authentic to me.”
Kaiden J. Yu / Staff Photographer
A remarkable level of control over Philly’s political arena
In one meeting in June, Council approved the initial legislation for the H.O.M.E. initiative, a $6.8 billion city budget, and a 13-year plan to gradually cut the business tax — all while makingminimal changes to Parker’s proposals.
For a moment, it appeared Council President Kenyatta Johnson had gotten rolled by Parker. But Johnson, standing next to Parker at a celebratory news conference, revealed they had been working together all along, even before Parker unveiled her budget and tax plans three months earlier.
“Folks want to see us fight,” Johnson said. “A while ago … we had the John Street-Ed Rendell partnership when the city thrived. We haven’t seen it since then, quite frankly.”
City Council President Kenyatta Johnson and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker at City Hall on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
It’s difficult to overstate the significance of the comparison. In the 1990s, Mayor Ed Rendell and Council President John F. Street formed an unlikely partnership that was credited with saving the city from the brink of bankruptcy. No mayor and Council presidenthave worked together as closely since.
The moment highlighted how Parker has amassed a remarkable level of control over institutions in Philadelphia government and politics that have tripped up past mayors’ agendas.
In City Hall, Parker’s alliance with Johnson has seen her agenda largely sail through the legislature. City Controller Christy Brady, whose office has historically been a thorn in the sides of mayors, ran for reelection this year on a platform of working with, and not against, the Parker administration.
And the unions for city workers,which have inflicted lasting wounds on past mayors including Rendell and Michael A. Nutter, are all locked in multi-year contracts after Parker’s successful stand against DC 33’s strike.
Politically, the centrist Democratic mayor has a seemingly unbreakable bond with some of the most influential labor organizations in the city — the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, the Carpenters union, and the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ — and she is usually in lockstep with Democratic City Committee Chair Bob Brady.
Additionally, potential threats from both the right and the left have not materialized, with the Philly GOP in the political wilderness and the local progressive movement appearing to have lost some momentum.
Parker said the support she has built in Philadelphia politics is not a strategy but the product of her career in public service, which began when she was a teenager interning for former Councilmember Marian Tasco.
“These are organic relationships. These are not like forced marriages,” Parker said. “I’ve been working with all of these people my whole life.”
Council took its most notable stand against Parker during a fight this fall over legislation related to the H.O.M.E. initiative.Johnson sided with lawmakers who wanted to prioritize funding for housing programs for the city’s lowest-income Philadelphians, defying Parker’s plan to spread the benefits more evenly across low- and middle-income households.
But Council still supports the major tenets of H.O.M.E., and Johnson made clear earlier this month the episodedid not damage his alliance with Parker. He even made an unsolicited early endorsement for her 2027 reelection campaign.
“I’m pretty confident that our mayor will be reelected — that’s my personal opinion — and will have my support to get reelected,“ said Johnson, the only senior Democratic member of Council who did not endorse Parker in the 2023 mayor’s race.
Despite facing little political opposition, Parker clearly still sees enemies in many corners.
The mayor bristles at dissent even when she wins, and has recently has been handing out to journalists, administration officials, and others copies of a 98-page book titled Performative Outrage: How Manufactured Fury Undermines Local Government and Public Service.
“It is truly our blueprint,” chief of staff Tiffany W. Thurman said. “It reminds us that noise isn’t the same as progress. … We don’t chase the outrage of the moment. We chase the outcomes of a lifetime.”
The city in August spent $423.80 to order copies for every cabinet member, according to records for the mayor’s office credit card.
Parker signed a copy of the book, which was given to a reporter, writing: “Great read!”
Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Signs of discord within the administration
Parker freely admits she is a tough boss. And the strains of working under her demanding leadership style started to show in her second year.
But Anderson, the former DEI director, pushed back on that account, and asserted that DeSantis’ investigation was a pretext for Parker to fire her because she had pushed for the administration to take a more aggressive stance against Trump’s DEI crackdown. Her comments took on new salience whenThe Inquirer revealed this fall that Parker had quietly ended the city’s longstanding policy of prioritizing city contracts for businesses owned by women, people of color, or disabled people due to legal threats from conservative groups.
Parker said personnel issues come with the territory of running a city.
“Things happen. You can’t have a government with 29,000 employees where stuff doesn’t just happen,” she said. “For me, it’s how does my administration navigate those challenges? … Do we get paralyzed into inaction? And the answer is no.”
Ramos added that Parker will be judged by outcomes, not internal disputes.
“At the end of the day, people only care about palace intrigue if they don’t see results,” Ramons said.
Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
A ‘big mahoff’ emerges
When she became mayor, Parker said she didn’t want one top aide to be the “big mahoff” in her administration. Instead she appointed a “big three” — a trio of senior advisers.
Two years later, it looks like Parker ended up with a “big mahoff” after all.
Thurman, the chief of staff, appears to have become the central figure in the administration, and her portfolio of responsibilities has continually grown over the last two years.
The shift started in 2024, when Thurman took over the 76ers arena negotiations from then-Chief Deputy Mayor Aren Platt. And when Platt resigned in October of that year, Thurman took over the oversight of all the city’s planning and development projects. This year, her portfolio has grown to include the Neighborhood Community Action Centers, a Parker initiative to establish 10 “mini-City Halls” throughout the city, where residents can request services like graffiti removal and traffic-calming measures.
Chief of staff Tiffany W. Thurman takes questions from City Council on Nov. 12, 2024.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Parker objected to the notion that her “big three” structure had gone by the wayside and emphasized that the two chief deputy mayors who make up the rest of the triumvirate continue to have “a hell of a lot” in their portfolios. Sinceré Harris, who was Parker’s 2023 campaign manager, oversees labor, legislative affairs, and intergovernmental relations. Vanessa Garrett-Harley leads on child welfare, early education, DEI, and other issues.
Thurman could instead be seen as a first among equals, given that Harris and Garrett-Harley still report directly to the mayor.
But at Friday’s event, Thurman introduced Parker with a flattering speech, and the mayor in turn made clear that Thurman has a central role in her administration.
“Tiffany Thurman is not just my chief of staff. She is the chief air traffic controller” of the administration, Parker said Friday. “Nothing moves in this city without her. I don’t make a decision without her.”
Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Staff Contributors
Reporting: Sean Collins Walsh, Anna Orso, Jake Blumgart, Ellie Rushing, and Ryan Briggs
Editing: Oona Goodin-Smith, Ariella Cohen, and Addam Schwartz
Digital Editing: Patricia Madej
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Mayor Cherelle L. Parker marked the halfway point of her term as mayor Friday by portraying the city as safer and more stable than when she took office two years ago, pointing to metrics like the plummeting homicide rate and cleaner streets.
During her second end-of-year State of the City speech, Parker also briefly acknowledged challenges she faced this past year, including the eight-day city worker strike and a spat with City Council over her signature housing plan.
And she outlined a plan to address rising street homelessness heading into 2026, when the city will host several major events expected to draw more than a million visitors.
Parker outlined a plan to address rising street homelessness heading into 2026, when the city will host several major events expected to draw millions of visitors, during her end-of-year speech at Temple University Friday.
“I am here today to proudly report to all of you,” she said, “that the state of our city is strong and good, and we are moving in the right direction.”
Parker’s announcement to add 1,000 shelter slots to the city’s system was a stark reminder that — despite progress on public safety and a coming year ripe with opportunity for tourism and growth — some of the city’s longest-term challenges remain unresolved.
And after the mayor this year unveiled a long-awaited plan to build thousands of units of housing in the city, she hit roadblocks in City Council, where members rejected her vision to bolster the middle class in favor of a plan that prioritizes the poorest Philadelphians.
Still, Parker and members of her administration struck an optimistic tone Friday. During the highly produced event, top officials repeatedly proclaimed that the “state of the city” is strong, and they thanked municipal employees in attendance, like police officers and sanitation workers.
Parker’s State of the City address last year was Philadelphia’s first. Traditionally, the mayor’s March budget address to Council was seen as the city’s version of the presidential State of the Union speech in Congress. Parker plans to make the December event an annual tradition as well.
Here are three takeaways from Parker’s speech Friday in North Philadelphia:
A homelessness plan is in the works for 2026
In the middle of her speech, Parker signed an executive order on stage, directing city departments to add 1,000 new beds to the existing shelter system by Jan. 31. That would represent a 35% increase in the number of beds citywide.
The move comes as city data shows homelessness in the city is rising. There were 1,178 unsheltered people in Philadelphia this year, a 20% increase over last year and the highest number recorded since at least 2018, according to city data.
In total, 5,516 people were considered homeless, a number that includes people who live in emergency shelters, are couch surfing, or otherwise lack an adequate nighttime residence. That number is up slightly from 5,191 last year.
Parker’s executive order directs city agencies to increase outreach efforts to people living on the streets and to collaborate with the Philadelphia Housing Authority to move people from shelters to more stable housing.
“We are seeking long-term solutions,” she said, “Solutions that will not only provide an expanded quality shelter system, but with more beds in safe, clean, and welcoming environments.”
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker holds up executive order ending street homelessness.
30,000-unit housing plan swells to 50,000
The mayor’s second year in office was in part defined by her plan to build, repair, or preserve 30,000 units of housing. In March, she unveiled her Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E., plan, funded by $800 million in bonds.
Parker made clear that her plan would be aimed at uplifting the middle class and often vowed never to pit “the have-nots against the have-a-little-bits.” But City Council this month advanced its own version of the proposal, rejecting Parker’s vision and directing more resources to the poorest Philadelphians.
It was the most significant break between Parker and the legislative branch of her tenure. But the mayor on Friday defended her strategy, saying the middle class should not be asked to wait for access to housing programs.
“You want me to tell you why we shouldn’t tell them to wait?” she said. “Because when I knocked on their doors and asked for their votes — and we’re running for reelection — we don’t ask them to wait.”
Of Council’s 17 members, just four attended Parker’s speech Friday: Anthony Phillips, a close ally, as well as Rue Landau, Jamie Gauthier, and Nicolas O’Rourke — three progressives who led the effort to amend her housing plan. They sat in the front row.
Parker struck a conciliatory tone, saying: “We will work together to press forward together, and we won’t let petty politics get in the way of us moving Philadelphia forward.”
The mayor also made clear Friday that her 30,000-unit benchmark is separate from a plan being advanced by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, which is pursuing an ambitious expansion plan that Parker said would add an additional 20,000 units of affordable housing.
“When you add our H.O.M.E. goal of 30,000 units with that 20,000, those are 50,000 units of housing,” Parker said, “and we shouldn’t have to leave any neighborhood behind.”
On Friday, Parker touted her administration’s work negotiating new contracts this year for almost all of the city’s major municipal unions. She acknowledged, but didn’t dwell on, the strike by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33.
“We did have to endure an eight-day work stoppage,” she said. “But guess what we did? In true Philadelphia fashion … we got through it. It wasn’t easy, but we persevered together, and we found common ground, and we reached a fair and fiscally responsible agreement with both District Council 33 and District Council 47.”
DC 33, the largest and lowest-paid union for city workers, called the strike when their previous contract expired at 12:01 a.m. July 1, the first minute the union was legally allowed to walk off the job. Union president Greg Boulware promised his members wouldn’t return to work unless they won raises of 5% per year.
Boulware eventually called off the strike and accepted a contract with raises of 3% per year, which is close to Parker’s last offer before the strike. The deal also included $1,500 onetime bonuses for the union’s roughly 9,000 members and the addition of a fifth step in the DC 33 pay scale, a benefit for veteran employees.
Parker also defended the city’s treatment of DC 33 under her tenure. Repeating an administration talking point from the strike, Parker noted that the union’s accumulated pay increases — combining raises the union won in a one-year contract during Parker’s first year with the increases included in the new three-year deal — will be higher in her first term than under any other mayoral term since the 1990s.
“Just for the record, I also need to affirm — because sometimes people [create] revisionist history — I want to be clear that they were historic pay increases for our city workers,” Parker said. “It’s the largest in one term from any Philadelphia mayor over 30 years.”
Almost 20 years after the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) moved out of its Center City headquarters, a long-promised mixed-income tower will finally begin construction early next year.
The 14-story building is being built by Philadelphia developer Alterra Property Group, which may also manage the site after it opens. PHA will hold a 99-year ground lease on the property at2012 Chestnut St., which will be its only affordable building in Center City.
“It’s a multifamily, mixed-use, mixed-income building in a high opportunity neighborhood,” said Kelvin Jeremiah, president and CEO of PHA.
It “would afford residents a huge opportunity to live in an area that has access to transportation, employment opportunities, and a whole host of amenities literally right outside of their building entrance,” he said.
The tower will have 121 apartments, 40% of which will be rented at market rate with the rest targeted at tenants below 80% of area median income (or almost $83,000 for a three-person household). It will have 28 studios, 63 one-bedroom, and 30 two-bedroom units.
It also will have 2,000 square feet of commercial space, parking available off-site, and amenities that include a roof deck. The project was designed by JKRP Architects.
“I’m looking to break ground in Q1 of next year,” said Mark Cartella, Alterra’s senior vice president of development and construction. “It’s been a long time coming, so we’re excited to finally be going vertical here.”
What took so long?
PHA moved out of its Chestnut Street headquarters in January 2008, leaving a four-story husk. The agency cycled through numerous plans for the property, including a new headquarters and selling the land to a private developer.
The partnership with Alterra began in 2016. At that time, the project would have had 200 units, a majority of them market rate, and the developer would have held the 99-year ground lease on the property.
But neighborhood pushback and the resulting negotiations delayed the proposal until 2020. Then the pandemic caused more chaos, followed by a spike in construction costs and elevated interest rates that killed the original financing plan.
That led to a new strategy in which PHA issued bonds backed by the future rents of the market-rate units to help pay for the project, along with additional funds from federal housing programs, and a $2 million boost promised by Council President Kenyatta Johnson from funds available through Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy (H.O.M.E.) initiative.
“By adding high-quality, affordable apartments alongside retail space in the area, this project helps ensure that our downtown remains vibrant, diverse, and accessible to working families and individuals,” Johnson said in a statement.
“The PHA project will also help deliver a more inclusive Center City that reflects the full spectrum and diversity of Philadelphia’s residents,” he said.
A rendering of the roof deck planned for the new mixed-income building proposed by PHA and Alterra.
The 95-year-old headquarters was demolished in early 2024, but groundbreaking has been delayed in the current unpredictable national economic and political environment.
“You can probably sum that all up with it’s just general uncertainty with the change of[presidential]administration, as well as just getting through the design development process with a lot of folks having input,” said Cartella of Alterra.
“This is a little bit beyond the [usual] design development process with Alterra,” he said. “It’s more stringent than what we typically have to go through.”
Jeremiah has repeatedly expressed concerns about how long the development process can take in Philadelphia, especially in combination with federal guidelines and requirements.
But as this process nears its end — 18 years after the move, 10 years since bringing on Alterra, and two since demolition — he is feeling optimistic.
“It is the first PHA built development in Center City,” said Jeremiah. “That’s going to be a signature project for me, for the city, for affordable housing.”
