Philadelphia City Council Advances a Dangerous Budget

This week Philadelphia City Council gave preliminary approval to the FY 2026 budget—a budget that is not only dangerous but also disrespectful to working Philadelphians. At a time when the federal government is threatening to gut Medicaid and actively detaining immigrants and protestors, Philadelphia leadership chose to prioritize tax breaks for the rich and handouts to corporations.

We are devastated that there will be no increase in funding for mobile crisis response. As mental healthcare becomes less accessible for people in our communities, we were hopeful city leadership would understand people in crisis need care from trained mental health professionals, not the police. We were wrong. They either do not understand that or do not care.

The vast majority of city leadership sided with cops over the communities they harm, corporations over public schools, landlords over renters, and bad bosses over workers. These are the choices that create the inequality that drives violence. If city leadership is truly committed to public safety, they will prioritize the investments that actually make us safer. We thank Council Members Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O'Rourke for standing with working people and committing to vote no on this harmful budget.

It is currently unclear what the path forward is for us to get a fair budget in the future. Hundreds of people took off work and pulled together childcare to make their needs known to City Council during public hearings. Councilmembers regularly skipped these sessions altogether. When they were present, they were often in and out, on their phones, seemingly unconcerned with the suffering of people living and working under poor conditions across Philadelphia. We will not stand for this.

There is a powerful, growing movement of people organizing with the Alliance for a Just Philadelphia that will continue building momentum in the months to come. We will make it costly for city leadership to dismiss our demands so they choose to do the right thing in the future. And we will vote them out if they don’t get to work for us.

Stay tuned for details on a mass meeting to discuss what this budget means for our campaigns and next steps in the fight for a budget that prioritizes the investments and protections we deserve.