Mayor Parker wants City Council members to give up a little power over land. They don’t love the idea.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has big plans for housing policy, to be paid for with $800 million in city bonds, and she needs City Council’s sign-off.

To get it done, she’s calling on the lawmakers to sideline one of their unofficial powers — at least a little bit.

Under the Philadelphia tradition known as “councilmanic prerogative,” the 10 district Council members hold unofficial veto power over zoning changes and city land sales in their territories.

Prerogative has been a hotly debated issue in Philly politics for years, with critics arguing it hinders growth and opens the door to corruption, while Council members contend it ensures that the public officials with their ears closest to the ground ― themselves — can make sure new developments align with community interests.

While she was on Council, Parker was herself an enthusiastic adherent of this custom, and she knows the city’s legislature would never fully give it up.

But on Monday, the mayor asked if lawmakers would consider streamlining city redevelopment processes in ways that could limit the role of prerogative — which she called “the elephant in the room” — in service of building more affordable housing on city-owned land and reaching her goal of 30,000 units of housing repaired or built during her time in office.

“I am not trying in any way, shape, or form to take away councilmanic prerogative,” Parker said. “But … I am proposing that [the city’s Land Bank] work directly in partnership with City Council to preauthorize the sale, donation, or transfer of municipally owned real estate for the purpose of constructing new housing under this new program.”

» READ MORE: Mayor Cherelle Parker unveils housing plan amid Trump’s federal funding cuts and Council skepticism

While the mayor in her speech did not question other elements of prerogative, literature that her administration circulated in advance of her remarks suggested she is interested in tweaking Council’s and neighborhood groups’ involvement in zoning policy in a manner that “reduces community opposition.”

Parker will have to proceed gingerly if she is to win over lawmakers for her $2 billion housing plan. Council members adamantly protect their power to tweak zoning maps in their districts, and expect to receive support from their colleagues as long as they remain within their territorial lines.

“District Council members have a right to make sure that they’re advocating on behalf of the individuals who put them in office,” Council President Kenyatta Johnson told reporters after Parker’s speech. “A lot of time we see development projects taking place in our neighborhoods. If anything goes wrong, they call the district Council person. They don’t call any anybody else.”

Philadelphia’s Land Bank, an agency meant to facilitate the disposition of city-owned property, features an unusual level of legislative oversight, largely due to former Council President Darrell L. Clarke’s insistence that lawmakers maintain granular involvement in every transaction when the agency was created.

But national experts on land banks have long warned that requiring politicians to sign off on all transfers is, at best, an impediment to the rapid redevelopment of land. At worst, it allows politicians to reward their friends and punish their enemies.

Parker knows Council would not agree to remove itself from the Land Bank process entirely. Instead, her proposal would create a list of “preapproved” parcels in each district that would not require new legislation to be introduced in order for the properties to be sold to developers.

Parker emphasized that such a list would not include larger properties ― such as those that could support large apartment buildings ― and that it would largely support the popular affordable homeownership plan called “Turn The Key.” Parcels for single-family home construction, or at most quadplexes (four-unit apartment buildings), would be favored.

“For the purposes of these bond dollars, we need to develop an expedited process where it doesn’t take a piece of legislation to move land out of our Land Bank,” Parker said. “[Currently] land can get held up for months, particularly when Council is out of session during the summer.”

To ensure that Council members maintain influence, Parker would also work with the body to craft a list of favored developers, in the hopes of keeping any city-owned land from winding up in the hands of speculators or bad actors.

“First we have a preauthorized list of land, then we can have a preapproved list of developers,” Parker said.

Even with those concessions, Parker’s ideas raised some eyebrows on Council.

Asked if he thought reducing Council’s role in some city land transfers was a good idea, Councilmember Mike Driscoll, who is often a Parker ally, expressed skepticism.

“I guess if you’re mayor, perhaps. If you’re a district councilman, I would say no,” said Driscoll, who represents parts of the river wards and Northeast Philadelphia.

Parker avoided touching on councilmanic prerogative’s other main pillar in her speech, mentioning the word zoning only a handful of times in the 90-minute address. But the administration’s pamphlets circulated in Council chambers before Parker’s speech included hints that changes to the city’s zoning code could be in the offing.

Council members frequently amend the zoning code in their district, sometimes through hyperlocal patches to the map called “zoning overlays.” But real estate developers, some affordable housing advocates, and good-government watchdogs have long warned that the practice makes it difficult to develop uses like apartments and homeless shelters, and adds unnecessary burdens to construction.

The administration’s literature recommended curtailing at least some overlays, although it did not elaborate on how that should be executed.

“We cannot have different land use and zoning policies in different parts of the city if we want to provide exceptional and consistent customer service,” the pamphlet read.

Many of the tweaks made by overlay legislation are meant to make it harder for particular kinds of development to occur without a trip to the Zoning Board of Adjustment, which necessitates that developers first meet with neighborhood groups before implementing changes. Such organizations have been accused of being reflexively antidevelopment and unrepresentative of the larger community, but the current code privileges their input.

Parker might want to change that. In a section marked “Policy Recommendations,” the administration’s pamphlet reads: “Reforming the avenues for community involvement in the processes of zoning and development in a way that reduces community opposition.”

After the mayor’s speech, many Council members praised the mayor for making housing a priority. But they had questions.

“The devil is really in the details, and I need more details to know exactly what is intended,” said Councilmember Cindy Bass, who represents the Northwest Philadelphia-based 8th District.

Bass hinted that her enthusiasm for the housing plan is based on the assumption that district Council members’ central role in land-use decisions will be preserved. Bass said she did not understand why the mayor explicitly commented on scaling back the role of prerogative, given that Parker also said district Council members would be involved in the housing initiative.

“This is something that I have questions about,” Bass said. “I’m not exactly sure why prerogative was highlighted as the ‘elephant in the room’ because it sounds like, from what she described, the district Council members are going to be included.”