How Kensington, growing pains, and unexpected crises defined Mayor Parker’s first 100 days

During last year’s election, it was far from clear that Cherelle L. Parker would become known as the mayor who tried to clean up Kensington.

But in her first 100 days in office, Parker has leaned in to addressing the crisis, and it now feels inevitable that her legacy will be tied in part to the fate of the beleaguered neighborhood.

It’s part of a pattern during the early days of Parker’s administration. Many politicians generate buzz with flashy promises on the campaign trail, only to temper expectations once they’re sworn in. Parker has seemingly done the opposite.

» READ MORE: Digging into the top issues of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s first 100 days, from Kensington to public safety

Despite winning an ultra-competitive Democratic primary and making history in the process, Parker’s campaign last year never built the type of hype that might be expected for Philly’s first female mayor. And her candidacy wasn’t defined by a specific policy proposal, aside from perhaps her controversial embrace of stop-and-frisk policing.

Both of those dynamics have changed since she was sworn in on New Year’s Day. Parker’s profile is now much higher than when she was a candidate — and her goal of ending the open-air drug market in Kensington has become a central issue for her administration and for the city as a whole.

In an interview about her first 100 days, Parker repeatedly brought up Kensington without prompting. She said she was surprised by the lack of coordination between the programs and services meant to help residents there and wants to implement a comprehensive, long-term plan for reviving it.

“I’ve been here 99 days, and what has been allowed to become the status quo, standard operating procedure for how life is lived in the Kensington area, it didn’t happen in a day,” she said. “I know we’re not going to fix it in a day. This administration has been intentional.”

Former City Councilmember Maria Quiñones Sánchez, who represented Kensington for 15 years before running for mayor last year, said it was striking that Parker is staking so much on such an intractable problem.

“The most important part of her putting political equity on the table about Kensington was that the residents were craving someone who said it was important and that they were important,” Quiñones Sánchez said.

But while Parker’s plans for Kensington have grabbed the public’s attention, inside City Hall there has been an undercurrent of frustration with the administration’s way of doing business.

Parker has taken an unusually long time to make appointments. Her communications office has required city agencies to submit press inquiries and social media posts for review, creating a bottleneck that has slowed information. And Parker’s lofty goals have not yet been accompanied by detailed plans, leading some Council members to become frustrated about vague funding requests during ongoing budget negotiations.

One Council source, who requested anonymity to protect relationships with the administration, said Parker’s team appears to still be playing catch-up from Parker’s slow pace of hiring top officials.

“They’re overwhelmed,” the person said. “They’re solving day-to-day problems, while planning for the future, while still trying to hire people.”

Parker said her deliberative and, compared to her recent predecessors, slow process for hiring top officials was the result of her desire to ensure she had the right team.

“You say, ‘Cherelle, what’s your goal? What’ your objective?’” she said. “Deliver a government to the people of Philadelphia that they can see, touch, and feel, where they can see their tax dollars at work in their neighborhoods.”

Parker was moving a mile a minute when she entered the mayor’s office for the first time as its occupant. The walls were barren in the carpeted wood-paneled room on the second floor of City Hall, and there was no furniture aside from a large desk and rows of chairs facing it.

It was Jan. 2, and Parker had just come from delivering a thunderous inaugural address to a crowd of hundreds at the Met Philadelphia and swearing in Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel at a ceremony in Kensington.

After she sat down at her desk, Parker was all business. She launched into an outline of policy plans, she signed three executive orders — on civil service job requirements, business permits, and public safety — and she parried reporters’ questions.

Then she was asked how it felt to be the first woman to hold the mayor’s office, and she suddenly fell silent.

“I’m numb right now,” she said after a pause. “But what I’m extremely mindful and cognizant of are the number of little girls and boys that I’ve seen today who grabbed me and wanted to take a picture with me, who come from neighborhoods and places where they probably never thought somebody like them could ever do something like this.”

One-hundred days later, there is still little on the walls, but the room has started to fill in, including a bookcase of thick binders containing reports and speeches Parker has annotated by hand: her five-year city budget plan, her speech to the Chamber of Commerce, and one that read “stadiums research” on the spine.

She has also lined up things to be hung, including a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., a photo of her making her first speech in the State House, and her diplomas from Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania.

More than 200 people, many in police whites, crammed into a room at the police station near Kensington in January to see Captain Pedro Rosario get promoted.

Rosario, who was named the city’s first deputy commissioner to be solely focused on Kensington, entered the room to uproarious applause. His loved ones shed tears, residents yelled felicidades, and Parker told Rosario to take a moment to “feel it.”

“Kensington for a very long time has been not a priority,” Rosario, who spent most of his career in the neighborhood, told the crowd. “With the leadership that we have in place, we’re moving in a direction to make it a priority.”

Naming Rosario was the first major move the administration made to change the strategy in Kensington. Parker has also partnered with Council members on legislation to address conditions in the neighborhood, and she’s boosted outreach in the neighborhood ahead of a planned homeless encampment clearing.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia could establish a triage center for people in addiction within weeks, official says

She said she was surprised some stakeholders — city departments, hospitals, and addiction treatment providers — weren’t already working together, saying her administration is “building out that ecosystem that doesn’t exist.”

Quiñones Sánchez said Parker understands the situation is the result of “a lot of bad policy and disinvestment.”

“I can’t tell you how much easier my job would have been if I had had just that as a Council person,” she said.

Parker drew criticism after vowing no city dollars would fund syringe exchange services, which have operated in the city for decades. And some advocates have said her approach could effectively criminalize addiction and homelessness.

Parker said her plan will be “holistic” and her decision-making is driven by longtime residents.

“There are some people who will tell you that… the people who live in Kensington, the long-term owner occupants, they have an outsized impact on my thinking,” she said. “I don’t apologize for that. They’re right.”

The email wasn’t subtle.

“To be absolutely clear, NO MEDIA INTERVIEWS, SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS, OR STATEMENTS OF ANY, KIND-UNTIL/UNLESS APPROVED IN ADVANCE BY MAYOR’S COMMUNICATIONS,” Managing Director Adam Thiel wrote Jan. 18 to agency leaders.

It doesn’t appear Parker’s office has punished employees who have used the city’s social media accounts to post basic information without permission. But the email nonetheless became shorthand to refer to a new dynamic the administration has brought to City Hall.

Decision-making is concentrated among a handful of Parker’s top aides, the flow of information is often laborious, and many outside the mayor’s inner circle are frustrated by the pace of action.

Parker is very much still in her honeymoon period, and almost no one in local politics is willing to criticize her publicly. But many in and around City Hall privately express frustration about working with the administration.

One person who works in local politics said that “analysis paralysis is holding them back.”

“Clearly their top-heavy structure is set up to be very deliberative, but the result is that typical government decisions that are normally resolved quickly and don’t need to be pondered over are taking a very long time to be resolved,” the person said.

A former official, whose tenure spanned the Kenney administration and the beginning of Parker’s, said the new administration has added layers of approvals even for routine matters.

”There’s a lot of frustration on the inside. Morale is becoming an issue,” said the former official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about their time in the administration.

Part of the dynamic is undoubtedly growing pains. But Parker also speaks openly about her deliberative decision-making and her caution with media.

Parker has acknowledged her style is new and that her drawn-out hiring process ruffled some feathers.

“The process was lengthy. I do get some jokes about that,” she said. “I get a lot of communication with people who talk about some processes that we have established, but I’m focused on getting the right people in place who understand the vision.”

Two hours after school let out in Northeast Philadelphia, Parker and Bethel stood in a downpour.

It was early March, and eight Northeast High students had been wounded in a shooting at a bus stop — two days after five people were shot at another bus stop near Imhotep Institute Charter High School. Three children were struck in that shooting, including a 17-year-old who died.

Under a line of umbrellas, Parker looked into the television cameras and delivered a pointed message: “We will not be held hostage. We will use every legal tool in the toolbox to ensure the public health and safety of the people in our city.”

When a reporter asked if that toolbox includes “stop-and-frisk,” the controversial police tactic that Parker embraced while on the campaign trail, Bethel responded with palpable frustration.

“Is this the moment in time? We have 11 children shot,” he said, then ended the news conference.

Such is the balance Parker is attempting to strike on public safety. She has vowed to “end lawlessness,” but has also promised to take a blended approach to crime prevention that goes beyond law enforcement.

After the shootings, Parker summoned elected officials, police, and victims’ advocates for an emergency meeting. And she met with a family of one of the victims, saying hearing from those most impacted “further reinforces the sense of urgency I have around making sure that we build systems and structures” that prevent crime.

Still, Parker’s timeline has been tested by high-profile incidents that have prompted outcry for fast change.

In January, a scuffle at a corner store left a man dead and an officer wounded. Another officer was shot the same week while serving a warrant. The bus stop shootings came in a week when there were four instances of gunfire on or near SEPTA.

Those crises, she said, reminded her that “at any minute something could happen.”

“Your well-made plans can just be put on the back burner to deal with an immediate crisis,” Parker said.

Ten minutes after the interview ended Wednesday, hundreds of people who gathered in West Philadelphia to celebrate Eid al-Fitr were sent running. A shootout erupted.

Staff writer Max Marin contributed to this article.