PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Mayor Cherelle Parker is expected to announce several new appointments to her administration this week, but even with the new additions, key city departments will remain without permanent commissioners.
Former Recreation Commissioner Susan Slawson, who's been running the Dell Music Center in East Fairmount Park, will be named commissioner of Parks and Recreation, according to multiple sources.
Multiple sources also say Perritti DiVirgilio, who's been enforcing wage and diversity standards for city contracts as director of the Department of Labor's Office of Labor Standards, will be elevated to the commissioner of the department.
As with many of Parker's previous appointments, stakeholders are pleased by the choice but puzzled by the delay. Most of Parker's choices have come from within city government, even from within the departments they've been chosen to run, not from a national search or some other time-consuming process.
The mayor's office emphasizes that she's been filling positions steadily, including new ones that she's created, and has reconfigured the departments of Streets and Licenses and Inspections to make them more efficient.
Still, two months into her term, critical departments, including Health and Human Services and Prisons, are being run either by appointees of former Mayor Jim Kenney or on an "acting" basis.
