Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration says it will clean every block in Philly this summer

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration will endeavor to clean every block in Philadelphia over 13 weeks this summer in what a top official said Friday would be the largest effort to address quality-of-life issues in city history.

Carlton Williams, the mayor’s director of clean and green initiatives, said the program will begin June 3 and that the city will soon release a schedule of when each neighborhood will be cleaned. He said city workers will collect trash, sweep streets, fill potholes, tow abandoned cars, remove illegal dumping, and fix abandoned properties.

Williams, the former Streets commissioner, said residents can expect a cleaner city by the end of the summer.

“Our goal is try to touch every block, every neighborhood throughout the city of Philadelphia,” he said, “to make sure we deliver those services so everyone can see how this proactive strategy works.”

The announcement came Friday just before Parker signed an executive order creating what she’s calling her “Clean and Green Cabinet,” a committee of 38 city officials, agency heads, community organizers, and private-sector leaders. The group is responsible for researching and developing methods and policy to clean the city. The cabinet is expected to meet at least five times a year and draft a report by year’s end.

“These are the people who are going to save us,” Parker said during a news conference in City Hall. “Running for office and winning an election is one thing. The day after you win that election, you wake up and … you say to yourself, ‘I can’t do any of this by myself.’”

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She said the group would “adopt and embrace innovative strategies that, quite frankly, can upset the standard operating way that the city of Philadelphia has been accustomed to doing business.”

Cleaning the entire city over a span of three months would fulfill a key campaign promise and underscores how critical improving quality of life is to the mayor’s agenda.

Since taking office in January, Parker has said her administration will expand commercial corridor cleaning, crack down on illegal dumping, tow 10,000 abandoned cars, and buy 1,500 new public trash cans. Her budget proposal includes spending $36 million on new “clean and green” initiatives, including 100 new sanitation workers, 10 dedicated residential street cleaning crews, and a pilot program for twice-weekly trash collection.

City Council and Parker’s administration are in the midst of negotiating her budget proposal. The sides must come to an agreement by next month, and lawmakers have expressed enthusiasm for her focus on cleanliness and quality-of-life issues.

The strategy to clean the city in a set period of time hearkens to former Mayor John F. Street, who prioritized improving neighborhood aesthetics. Four months into his first term, Street announced in April 2000 that his administration would tow 40,000 abandoned vehicles over 40 days. The program became a signature achievement.

Williams said the Parker administration sees the summertime effort as a starting point.

“We know that wont be the end. That is the beginning,” he said. “So we have to continue to put in strategies like enforcement, education, and outreach. But the cleaning is a big part of how we want people to see, touch, and feel what we’ve started.”