Mayor Parker had a big first year, from city cleanup to the Sixers arena. But many challenges remain.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker ended her first year in office the same way she started it: standing in an auditorium on North Broad Street on a chilly day, speaking directly to the city where she grew up.

In January, when she delivered her inaugural address at the Met Philadelphia, Parker had just been sworn in as the first female mayor in city history, and she promised Philadelphians weary of crime and uncertainty that change was on the way.

On Friday, 353 days later, she gave a “State of the City” address at Temple University that in itself was a demonstration of how things had changed since the administration of former Mayor Jim Kenney, whose withdrawn public persona was nearly the opposite of Parker’s relentlessly energetic image.

“I am invigorated by the challenge every single day,” Parker said. “I did not run to be mayor of the city of Philadelphia so I could simply be a footnote in somebody else’s history book. We wanted to use this opportunity to get things done.”

» READ MORE: Mayor Cherelle Parker marks the end of her first year in office with Philly’s first ‘State of the City’ speech at Temple

Parker, a former City Council member and Philadelphia’s 100th mayor, during her first year in office took on several high-profile showdowns in which she came out on top, capped by winning legislative approval last week for a new 76ers arena in Center City that she strongly supported. The mayor made strides on major campaign promises like introducing year-round school and cleaning up the city. And her administration oversaw a dramatic reduction in gun violence — a decline that is consistent with national trends, but progress nonetheless.

Parker racked up those wins despite an undercurrent of discord and dysfunction in City Hall. She was slow to make major appointments, and a few key roles are still unfilled. A chief deputy mayor resigned less than one year into her administration. She feuded with unions that represent city workers. And she has faced pointed criticism from Council members over communication failures.

Through it all, Parker’s style of leadership has begun to come into focus.

A powerful orator and committed cheerleader for the city, Parker has been praised for having a more consistent public presence than her predecessor. Conversely, she can be defensive, sometimes refusing to back away from a stance in the face of vocal opposition. And she has high expectations for herself and her staff, some of whom have at times been frustrated with how decision-making is concentrated at the top of the administration.

Thanks to her political skills and the graces given to a new administration in its honeymoon period, Parker has largely won the battles she’s signed up for and has advanced a majority of her campaign promises.

But vulnerabilities remain heading into her second year in office. The mayor’s relationship with City Council members is fragile, the incoming presidential administration is unpredictable, and stubborn challenges persist, including the Kensington drug market that Parker promised to dismantle.

The mayor said in an interview with The Inquirer last week that she’s clear-eyed about what’s ahead.

“I’m never going to be satisfied with any outcomes,” Parker said. “Never. Even when we do something and we do it well, I’m still never going to be satisfied, because I want to do more. That’s in my DNA. I can’t help it. That’s how I’m wired. I want to be better. I want us to do better.”

At Parker’s “State of the City” speech Friday, she stood in front of a screen with the words she utters at nearly every public appearance: the safest, cleanest, greenest big city with access to economic opportunity for all.

At the end of the address, as she often does, she asked attendees to hold a finger up for a call-and-response. Parker says, “One Philly, a united city,” and the crowd repeats her, echoing her mantra that’s been plastered across city trash cans, billboards, SEPTA ads, and television commercials.

The mayor’s supporters see an energetic leader. Her critics groan at the sloganeering, saying she’s campaigning even a year into governing.

But Parker says those words aren’t slogans — they’re governing principles.

“I hear people making jokes about it,” Parker said. “Got a couple more years of it. Because it won’t stop. That’s the focus.”

The mantras have guided Parker’s significant number of public appearances, marking a notable shift from the more subdued Kenney, who seemed to all but retreat from public view in his second term.

This year, Parker held 20 lengthy town halls across the city about the Sixers arena and her budget proposal. She hosted news conferences after major crimes and unexpected emergencies. She rode a bicycle in front of cameras to demonstrate her commitment to street safety.

“The visibility to the general public has been a significant improvement,” said City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas when asked about Parker’s leadership through her first year.

For Parker, it’s about communicating directly to constituents, in part because she distrusts when others speak on her behalf.

“I won’t give anyone the ability to speak for me,” she said. “I won’t give anyone the ability to be the filter.”

That approach has also caused some uncomfortable moments, including with other government officials. During a town hall earlier this month, Parker stood before hundreds of constituents in West Philadelphia and argued with City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, a progressive Democrat from the neighborhood who supported one of Parker’s opponents in the mayoral race last year.

During a question-and-answer session, a former resident of the shuttered University City Townhomes brought up the city’s agreement to fund affordable housing in the area. He told Parker she agreed to the funding “because of the advocacy that kept your feet to the fire.”

Parker apparently thought the man was referring to Gauthier, who pushed for the funding. The mayor told the man Gauthier did not “twist my arm.” Gauthier waved Parker off, saying that’s not what he meant.

“Excuse me,” Parker responded. “I’m talking about what this gentleman just said, Councilwoman … anybody telling you that they had to pressure me to get me to do what was right, we worked through a legislative process.”

Gauthier stood, saying repeatedly: “That’s not what he said.” Parker forcefully responded twice: “That is what he said.”

When a video of the exchange circulated on social media this month, other Council members took note. For some, it was yet another example of lawmakers who don’t agree with Parker feeling “talked down to,” said one member who requested anonymity to speak freely about the dynamic.

And the moment underscored the lingering discord between Parker and some Council members, despite the body mostly approving her agenda this year.

It looked like the honeymoon had ended.

In April, after weeks of private grumbling, several Council members who opposed Parker’s nomination of Joyce Wilkerson to a new term on the school board let their discontent spill out in public.

Led by Thomas, lawmakers grilled Wilkerson during a public hearing, and Council President Kenyatta Johnson declined to bring her nomination up for a vote, withdrawing it from consideration instead.

“I know that Mayor Parker, who is a former member of this legislative body … will respect the decisions of the members of this body,” Johnson said at the time.

How the mayor reacted would be closely watched by those seeking to understand the new dynamic between Philly’s executive and legislative branches in the Parker-Johnson era. Would Parker acquiesce and send a different nominee? Would she let the seat stay unfilled as a public reminder of Council obstruction? Would she demand a vote on Wilkerson?

Wilkerson walked out of Council chambers, stood before the media, and produced a letter from Parker: The mayor had asked that she remain in the seat indefinitely because Council has not confirmed a replacement.

In her first year, Parker has repeatedly sent the message that once she takes a public stance on an issue, she will not back down.

When a union for city workers sued the administration to stop the implementation of the mayor’s order bringing all employees back to the office full-time, there was speculation as to whether Parker would compromise, perhaps by bringing workers back four days per week. Instead, the city went to court and won.

When a different union threatened to strike over Parker’s insistence on signing a one-year contract extension rather than a traditional multiyear deal, Parker held out and eventually got her way with a one-year agreement. (The city, however, had to offer the union its largest single-year raise in decades to seal the deal.)

Parker says she isn’t too “pigheaded” to change her positions on issues when she learns new information. But given the work she puts into each decision she makes, she said, it’s not easy to persuade her to change her mind.

“When I’ve done everything that I could as it relates to my homework, and my subject matter experts have informed me, and I have all of the data available, and I make a decision — to me, this is when leadership kicks in,” Parker said. “I’m not going to be swayed. You know, [by] which way is the wind blowing? Where’s the loudest noise or crowd coming from? You can’t govern that way.”

Kyle Darby, a City Hall lobbyist who was a policy adviser for Parker’s campaign, said “newer-school” politicians alter their strategies or positions if they encounter significant pushback. He said pressure campaigns don’t work on Parker, who has served in elected offices in Philadelphia and Harrisburg for nearly 20 years.

“Because she comes from that very old-school, retail version of politics, she is someone who doesn’t have that level of fear,” Darby said.

It’s no accident that Parker has made clear she won’t easily be swayed, Darby said.

“It’s hard to trust people that go back and forth,” he said. “She’s been very consistent on any decision she’s made, whether you like it or not.”

The letter from Parker that Wilkerson read to the media asked her to continue serving until the mayor found a new nominee. Eight months later, Parker has not picked a replacement, and Wilkerson is still a school board member.

Shortly before she took office, Parker announced that her staff would not be led like past administrations that had one “big mahoff” — a top aide seen as the right hand of the mayor — but by a “big three” trio of deputies.

“No one like me has ever been elected mayor of our city, and no one has ever organized their senior staff this way,” Parker said a year ago.

The unusual structure had its critics, who said there would not be a clear conduit to the mayor. One administration official later told The Inquirer it led to tasks getting “bottlenecked” and left some feeling “frustrated both inside and outside of the city.”

In October, Parker had a chance to change it, when one member of her “big three,” Chief Deputy Mayor Aren Platt, resigned unexpectedly. A longtime confidante of Parker’s and an architect of her mayoral campaign, Platt’s departure less than a year into the administration came as a shock in City Hall.

Parker remains on good terms with Platt, who now oversees her campaign, and his resignation may reflect that he and Parker agreed he was more successful in politics than government. But it was also a moment for the mayor to potentially examine whether the dynamics that led to Platt’s departure were caused, in part, by the administration’s structure.

Instead, Parker doubled down to create a second triumvirate of deputies. She elevated City Hall veteran Vanessa Garrett-Harley to chief deputy mayor, joining chief of staff Tiffany W. Thurman and fellow Chief Deputy Mayor Sinceré Harris in the new ”big three.”

One downside of having three top staff members instead of one is that the arrangement could foster competition or turf wars among the top deputies and their subordinates.

But to the extent the structure has led to an intense work environment, Parker might not mind it. The mayor acknowledges she is a tough manager and says she channels her grandmother, who helped raise Parker and who used to explain that she was tough on Parker because she knew she could rise above her station.

“With my team, am I always stretching and pushing and requiring that homework is done?” Parker, a former schoolteacher who grew up in West Oak Lane, said. “Yes, but I also believe I have the best and the brightest people with me. So naturally I have very high expectations for them because, quite frankly, they’re smart.”

Her team, she said, is on board.

“As a manager, I know it’s also been important to me that I understand and people understand that they are plugged into something that’s bigger than them,” she said. “The work is not just about you.”

The day that Parker can’t seem to shake was a rainy one in March.

She was in the car when Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel told her the news on an urgent conference call: There had been a shooting near a busy bus stop in Northeast Philly. It was the middle of the afternoon. Eight students were hit.

Parker felt the magnitude of the moment almost immediately.

“All the young people,” she recalled. “And then you start individualizing. And how do we even get to a point where this is even a possibility? How is it even possible? Like, where did we fail?”

Crime rates in the city have significantly improved this year. Gun violence is down from its post-pandemic peak, with homicides reduced by 37% compared with last year. The city is on pace to finish 2024 with fewer killings than in any other year since at least 2016.

But it’s moments like that March afternoon at the bus stop that Parker says remind her of the work that’s unfinished. Philadelphia is still the poorest big city in America. The school system has long struggled. Too many young people settle their scores with guns.

“[The shooting] laid bare all of the challenges that we have in the city,” Parker said, “and the importance of addressing them at the root and not running from them.”

Observers say that Parker made strides on a handful of projects in her first year, but that her strategies for tackling root issues like poverty are less clear.

George R. Burrell, a former City Council member, said he views former Mayors Ed Rendell and John F. Street as among the city’s most successful because they “did things that were changing people’s quality of lives, and they saw it.”

Parker, he said, has “fallen short on that productivity.”

“And I’m hopeful,” he added, “that the mayor [will] move on to: How do we get at public education? How do we get at poverty? How do we get at growing Black businesses?”

Perhaps the most intractable issue that remains is the open-air drug market in Kensington, where hundreds of people in addiction live on the street. Parker’s administration unveiled a plan for the neighborhood in April. In May, the city conducted a sweep of encampments on Kensington Avenue and forced away many of the people living in them — some went into treatment; others dispersed into the neighborhood.

Months later, the administration is still developing its strategy to house and treat people in Kensington. Neighborhood leaders who have supported Parker’s promise to change conditions say she has yet to address systemic issues like poverty and addiction.

Instead, increased policing has pushed people from one corner to another, said longtime resident Bill McKinney, who leads the New Kensington Community Development Corp.

Parker often says change won’t come to Kensington overnight, but residents still expected more meaningful differences a year after they were promised. Some, McKinney said, are growing frustrated.

“There’s nothing that indicates for me this is anything other than what we’ve seen in the past,” he said.

» READ MORE: Chaos and confusion have followed Kensington encampment clearing, residents and businesses say

Parker said developing a public health strategy for people in addiction takes time. Her administration is racing to open the Riverview Wellness Village, a 640-bed treatment facility in Northeast Philadelphia. But $100 million in funding for it was just approved in July, and selecting providers to serve people with complex health needs takes months. Riverview is not yet ready for patients.

While clutching her notes during an interview in a City Hall room where the mayor’s cabinet typically meets, Parker said she doesn’t regret promising to dismantle the Kensington drug market. It “should have been the goal of every administration,” she said.

And if all goes to plan, Parker said, progress will become clear soon. Her first cabinet meeting next year will not be in that City Hall room. It will be at Riverview.

Staff writer Max Marin contributed to this article.