Parker’s Clean and Green cabinet will start major Philly cleanup in June

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For 13 weeks, city workers will embark on a major effort to clean the streets of Philadelphia.

Starting in June, members of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Clean and Green cabinet will oversee the work to clean streets, remove abandoned vehicles and make the “Filthydelphia” image a thing of the past, as Parker said.

She announced the effort Friday morning in City Hall alongside her 38-member Clean and Green cabinet. They’ve been tasked with collaborating with city departments to develop new, innovative ways to keep the city clean while making it the cleanest big city in America.

“They’re going to utilize their expertise in their respective professional and community fields” gathering information,” Parker said. “This will be the group that will work to create the action plan that we will work on. Implementing the plan requires all of them to work together.”

Clean and Green head Carlton Williams offered limited details about the massive effort.

“We will holistically implement that strategy starting June 3rd,” Williams said. The 13-week program “will involve over 12 city departments cleaning every neighborhood every block at a time, fixing potholes, fixing abandoned properties, and removing abandoned autos.”

Mayor Parker selected members of the cabinet from a wide variety of backgrounds. There are elected officials, business leaders, nonprofit leaders, community members and others who want to see improvements in the city.

“I have failed if the people who are standing around me are not making good on delivering in their respective organizations with our collaboration and our partnership,” she said. “We’re on our way because they all know that I’ll stalk them if they don’t deliver.”

As part of the announcement ceremony, Parker signed an executive order to create the cabinet, mandating that they meet at least five times a year, among other things.

She also signed a memo of understanding separating out the duties of the Sanitation Department into its own division with a commissioner of sanitation.

The MOU does point at a proposed change to the city charter to make the sanitation department a completely different city office. Until then the streets commissioner will technically oversee sanitation department duties.