Philly’s mayor: CEO of the City of Philadelphia

Like a chief executive officer of a corporation, a mayor is the CEO of a city. And as Philly’s about to elect its next one, it’s a good idea to have a sense of what you’re voting for.

They’re the person that develops strategies to be implemented city-wide, delegates and appoints leadership positions to critical departments and manages the overall operations of a company — or in this case, Philadelphia.

According to the current Philadelphia mayor, Jim Kenney, the position isn’t a top-down authority but making changes through consensus among city leadership and the public.

“City council is the mayor’s board of directors,” Kenney said. “As I’ve served on boards of directors before, you need the board’s go-ahead in order to move forward with programs your company (or in this case a city) wants to implement. You’re also responsible for hiring the department heads that run each operating department, and you work with your cabinet to coordinate that as best you can.”

It’s a tall order with around 26,000 employees and a five billion dollar-plus budget to oversee, but with the right leadership, it is manageable, said the current mayor.

Lauren Cristella, the interim president and chief operating officer for the nonpartisan nonprofit election watchdog organization Committee of Seventy, said the mayor’s job is so impactful to the life of Philadelphians because their strategy trickles down into all departments in the city.

“The hiring is probably the first and most important job of any new mayor,” said Cristella. “Everything from the managing director, city representative and the police chief and fire commissioner. All of those executive department heads, and there are tons of them throughout the city, cover almost every facet of life — that’s all in the mayor’s purview.”

The leaders hired for these city departments implement the mayor’s strategy in a variety of ways, like proposing roadway solutions like the Washington Avenue Repavement and Improvement project or implementing a tax on sugary drinks to fund free Pre-K and improvements to parks and playgrounds. In the case of the Washington Ave. improvement project, those proposals come from leadership in the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability. In contrast, proposals like Philly’s soda tax came directly down from Mayor Kenney. Either way, the strategies and leadership the mayor employs shape the way our city looks.

“You need to hire people that are smarter than you,” said Kenney about delegating leadership. “Then you need to listen to their points of view and come to some mutual group decision that you’re all now responsible for.”

Here’s just a small sample of the departments the mayor sets the agenda for and oversees:

A candidate must be at least 25 years old, a citizen of the U.S. and at least a three-year resident of Philadelphia.

Once elected, the Mayor has a term of four years and can only serve for two consecutive terms at a time. For example, after this mayoral term ends, Mayor Kenney can’t run again for Mayor for a third term. However, he could run again after the next Mayor finishes their first term. According to the city’s Home Rule Charter, the two-term limit is consecutive, not lifetime.

The current mayor makes $240,000 per year, according to the Committee of Seventy. However, in 2018, Kenney reported a salary of a little more than $218,000 so it’s possible to receive raises as mayor.

Yes. To contact the mayor’s office you can call (215) 686-2181, fill out the online contact form or visit City Hall Office 215 at 1400 JFK. Blvd.

In Pennsylvania, local governments cannot vote to remove an elected official, nor can the public petition to recall an elected official. However, elected officials themselves can quit their job — it’s called resigning.

If the mayor resigns, a special election would be called to fill the vacancy, or if it’s the last year of a mayor’s term, City Council will vote in a new mayor to finish the term. In the time between the mayor’s resignation and the appointment of a new mayor after a special election or City Council vote, the City Council President would become interim mayor.

Philadelphians themselves can’t recall the mayor. While the city’s Home Rule Charter has a provision explicitly outlined for the public to gather enough signatures and request the mayor to resign or face a recall election — it’s not enforced due to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that rules the provision unconstitutional.

There’s potentially another way, which involves the state legislature impeaching a local elected official — as seen most recently with the Pennsylvania House of Representatives’ failed attempt to impeach Philly District Attorney Larry Krasner — however, impeachment of a Philly politician by the state legislature is very rare and has never been successful.

Philly’s current and soon-to-be former mayor, Jim Kenney, is in his final term. Since becoming mayor in 2016, his main priority has been public education, making Philadelphia the first big U.S. city to implement a soda tax, which funds the city’s free Pre-K program that serves more than 3,000 children in the city and funds improvements to parks through a multi-million-dollar program called Rebuild.

Where Kenney may have fallen short, and by his own admission, is the administration’s choice to have a young start-up operate the city’s first COVID-19 rollout, which ended in a scandal. However, 76% of Philadelphians were fully vaccinated by the following year.

Additionally, his tenure has been marked with record gun violence as the city’s number of shootings has reached record levels in the past three years. However, the fault of gun violence doesn’t fall on one person in government, especially so in Philadelphia, where city leadership is legally not allowed to create their own gun laws due to a legal rule called “preemption.”

Across the city, most Philadelphians agree that the city is heading in the wrong direction, according to The Inquirer’s most recent analysis of a market research survey conducted by the firm SSRS. Additionally, a whopping majority of respondents said crime is their number one concern in the city. Following crime, residents are concerned about public education and the economy.

According to the AARP’s most recent poll, older adults in Philadelphia agree and say personal safety and security concerns are on their minds when voting for the city’s 100th mayor. Adults ages 50 years and older are also worried about affordable housing, making sidewalks safer and improving the economy and job opportunities.

Philadelphia’s next mayor will have to have plans to address gun violence in the city, improve public education and job creation, and find ways to make housing more affordable.