PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Mayor Cherelle Parker is about to close out her first year in office with some substantial victories to her credit and very few setbacks, a record she is proud of but not satisfied with, as she told city officials and local leaders at a year-end presentation at Temple University the Friday before Christmas.
When she sat down with KYW Newsradio’s City Hall bureau chief, Pat Loeb, however, Parker talked about the more personal aspects of becoming not just the first woman mayor of the city, but the first mom in the job.
“I will tell you, I could not be a mom mayor without the village of people who are around me,” she said — singling out her ex-husband who, she said, has been “amazing” — then added with a hearty laugh, “I joke now and say, ‘Where was this before the divorce?’”
Raising her son, 12-year-old Langston, has had an impact on her policies, she said, crediting her emphasis on an extended school day and school year to her understanding of the demands on working mothers.
🎧 Hear full interview | 20 min.
As she talked about prioritizing quality time with her son, it also seemed to explain her occasionally cancelling public appearances at the last minute.
“We took a day—I forget what holiday it was—and I was like, ‘You know what? I know I have a ton of places to go but I’m not going,’” she recalled. “We did golf and then we did bowling, which I’m terrible at. He was just happy.”
As determined as she is not to miss her son’s tween and teenage years, she is passionate about challenging the status quo in city government.
She’s been guided by the four elements of her oft-repeated mission statement: Safe, clean, green and economic opportunity.
She essentially changed the government’s structure by executive order, separating Streets from Sanitation, dividing Licenses and Inspections into two departments, and creating an Office of Clean and Green Initiatives—all of which helped set up her big agenda to clean every block in the city.
And she capped the year with approval of a Center City 76ers arena that she believes will bring economic opportunity to the entire city, despite an exhaustive effort to prevent the deal led by residents and businesses in nearby Chinatown.
Her tenacity has been impressive, but she rejects the notion that she is inflexible.
“When people say that I don’t back down, they don’t see the behind-the-scenes, and what’s it’s taken to get to the decision-making point,” Parker said. “Most of the time I am not where I started. The Council president and I have talked. Or my team, my subject matter experts, say, ‘I know this is where you want to go, but this is what we can do legally, and this is where we can stretch.’ It’s not always my way.”
She has often talked about her need for organization to get things done, as symbolized by her omnipresent binder, a trick she said she learned in her twenties from her mentors, including her political godmother Marian Tasco.
“Marian Tasco would say, ‘What would happen if you get hit by a Mac truck? How are we going to continue’ with whatever the effort was,” Parker recalled with a laugh.
She said it helps to share information, and it also provides structure.
“How do you eat the elephant?” Parker asked rhetorically. “One bite at a time, so that you’re not overwhelmed by the whole, the pressure of being the mayor.”
She conceded she did not fully grasp what the job would be until she started doing it, but she has no regrets.
“Is it a lot of pressure? Yes,” she said. “But the pressure is a privilege, and I asked for it. And now that I’m here, you’re never going to hear me complain. But I’m human.”
She has an ambitious agenda for 2025, including rolling out her plan for 30,000 new units of housing. But, she warned, at least one thing is not going to change in the new year.
“When I say ‘One Philly, a city united,’ I hear people laughing, because they hear me say it so much—but nothing about it is going to change,” she said. “That’s my permanent binder in my brain. Everything that I do is going to be working toward that goal.”