Did Mayor Cherelle Parker waste political capital with her first budget proposal? It’s complicated, insiders say.

In 2008, newly elected Mayor Michael A. Nutter asked City Council to support a plan to issue an unprecedented $4.5 billion in debt to address the underfunded pension system as part of his first budget proposal.

Eight years later, Nutter’s successor, Jim Kenney used his first budget to call for a controversial new tax on sweetened beverages, known as the “soda tax.”

Last week, new Mayor Cherelle L. Parker introduced a $6.29 billion budget focused on improving public safety and cleaning and greening the city. But it notably lacked a major proposal that appears likely to face skepticism from the majority of Council.

It’s conventional wisdom in City Hall that mayors use their first budgets — when their popularity is highest and their influence greatest — to push Council members to do something big that they might not go for later.

“For all executive positions — whether it’s mayor, governor, president — your first year to two is when your leverage is at its maximum,” said Joseph McLaughlin, a Temple University public policy professor.

So does that mean Parker is wasting precious political capital? Not necessarily, according to McLaughlin and other veterans of Philly politics. And the reasons have to do with the unique moment in which Parker has taken office.

Philly’s municipal services are still struggling to recover from the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and thousands of city jobs remain vacant. And although homicide rates have begun to fall, the gun violence crisis continues, highlighted by the recent shooting of eight students who were preparing to board a SEPTA bus.

Parker campaigned on fixing those issues by making Philly the “safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the country,” and the budget address she delivered to Council last week didn’t stray far from that message.

“Her job right now is to stabilize things,” said Larry Ceisler, a longtime City Hall observer who owns a public affairs firm. “She’s deferring the use of her political capital.”

In fact, Ceisler said, if Parker had proposed something unexpected that wasn’t focused on improving city operations, it might have hurt her standing.

Council members expressed support for Parker’s plan, but she’ll still encounter some opposition. The mayor, for instance, is already facing criticism from progressives for her approach to Kensington, such as reversing her predecessors’ policies by not allowing city money to fund sterile needle exchange programs.

McLaughlin noted that one of Parker’s most high-profile promises — shutting down Kensington’s open-air drug market — is largely an issue for the executive branch to tackle.

“The drug problem is going to be a tough one for her to deliver on,” said McLaughlin, who represented Philly’s city government as a lobbyist under four mayoral administrations. “There could be legislative things, but I think it is a matter largely of execution.”

Parker said it would be “presumptuous” for her to assume that Council is likely to go along with the major planks of her budget proposal.

“This process is subjective,” she said in an interview after delivering her budget address to Council on Thursday. “There are some people who would want the city to invest in a needle exchange. That is their belief.”

In a hearing last week, Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke questioned whether the city was abandoning “harm-reduction” strategies that focus on keeping people in addiction alive until they seek treatment.

But although progressives have grown their ranks in Council, the more moderate majority appears likely to support her tough-on-crime approach to public safety in Kensington and elsewhere. And many were enthusiastic on Thursday about supporting her five-year $246 million plan for improving cleanliness in the city.

» READ MORE: Mayor Parker’s $246 million plan to clean up ‘Filthadelphia’

New Council Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson called Parker’s budget a “bold plan to address many of the long-standing issues that Philadelphians have faced for far too long.”

Parker’s proposal includes an $11 million pilot program for twice-weekly trash pickup, 1,500 more “Big Belly” style trash cans, sealing 900 vacant buildings, and hauling away 10,000 abandoned cars.

A former Council member, Parker also proposed creating dedicated cleaning crews for each Council district — a proposal that caused some lawmakers to erupt in applause during her speech. Councilmember Mike Driscoll banged on his desk in approval.

Kenney succeeded in passing the sweetened-beverage tax after a contentious fight in Council during his first budget negotiations as mayor. It is widely seen as the most significant accomplishment of his tenure.

Ceisler’s firm was hired by the beverage industry to help fight the new levy in 2016. Noting that Council had recently defeated an attempt by Nutter to pass a similar tax, Ceisler credited Kenney’s success to the fact that he was new in the office.

“I can’t tell you how many Council people during the process told us that, if it wasn’t for the fact that it was the mayor’s first ask of this City Council, they would not have done it,” Ceisler said.

Nutter, however, wasn’t so lucky with the big proposal in his first year. He had to scrap his pension bond plan months after proposing it due to the global financial crisis, and his efforts to plug the city’s unprecedented budget shortfalls — most infamously, by cutting library funds — ended up alienating many on Council.

He said it was wise for Parker to build goodwill with lawmakers now — before she needs them.

“You do have a lot of political capital at the beginning, but it is the beginning,” he said. “You don’t want to use it all right at the beginning. You don’t know what you’re going to need. ... From a purely political standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with posting some wins early on.”

Another reason that Parker may not need to force Council to take many tough votes this year is that the city’s finances are in relatively good condition.

Mayors often struggle to fund their priorities and need to propose new taxes or rate increases to find the cash. Kenney’s beverage tax, for instance, funded his major spending goals: pre-K, community schools, and the Rebuild program, which renovates rec centers and playgrounds.

But money isn’t a pressing issue for the Parker administration. The city is projecting to end the current budget year with a $535 million surplus, the pension system is more than 60% funded for the first time in decades, and the city is still spending down almost $450 million in federal pandemic relief funding.

Instead, the challenge for Parker is to turn those resources into visible improvements in city services given the nationwide staffing crisis affecting local governments. The police department, for instance, is on pace to spend less on personnel costs than was budgeted this year due to recruitment difficulties, finance director Rob Dubow said.

In her address, Parker said the city hopes to hire 400 police officers a year and vowed to improve the way the city markets itself to prospective employees. She announced a new policy that would allow retired city workers to return to work and continue collecting their pensions.

Parker may not need to ask Council for much this spring that Council doesn’t want to do already. But if she makes progress on her goals, she may come out of next year’s budget with more political capital than she started.

“If her administration can get a handle on crime and on gun violence and on Kensington and things associated with street cleaning,” Ceisler said, “she will have more than her share of political capital going forward.”

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.