The most notable thing about the City of Philadelphia’s new budget for fiscal year 2027 may be how little the overall number changed. Overall spending for the City’s General Fund totals about $7 billion, about a 4 percent increase from last year’s budget. That increase is much smaller than the 7.5 percent jump during last year’s budget cycle.
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The General Fund is the City’s main operating budget. It pays for the basic functions of local government, including police and fire protection, trash collection, parks, libraries, and many other day-to-day services. It also shows where Mayor Parker is directing new money, and where spending is rising because of obligations the City has limited ability to avoid.
This tension is one of the main stories in this year’s budget. Some of the costs that continue to rise are familiar ones, including employee fringe benefits, debt service, utilities, rent, and wage increases tied to labor contracts. But the overall increase was held down in part because some large FY26 costs were temporary and are no longer in the budget, including funding reserves for expiring labor contracts and spending for the City’s 2026 special events like the World Cup and America’s 250th birthday celebration. The end result is a budget that looks relatively steady at the top but has several sub-categories moving in different directions.
To see where this year’s budget changed, we broke the budget into major categories, divided those totals by Philadelphia’s population, and compared the adopted FY27 per-person amounts with those in the adopted FY26 budget. After the chart below, we provide some of the main highlights from this year’s budget.
Here are some of the most substantial takeaways:
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- Fixed costs continue to dominate: As in past years, a sizable share of the budget is shaped by costs the City is already committed to paying, including fringe benefits, debt service, and utilities and rent payments. Each of these spending categories increased between 4 and 9 percent in the adopted budget, adding a total $60 per-person to this year’s budget.
- One-time costs falling away: Some large FY26 appropriations did not continue at the same level in FY27. That includes $42.9 million for the City’s 2026 special events — about $27 per Philadelphian — that did not carry over. Labor reserve funding, recorded in the Civil Service Commission’s budget, also declined by $56.1 million, or about $36 per person, as less money is needed to cover the costs of recent labor agreements and arbitration awards.
- Police wage increases: With rising fixed costs offset in part by the end of some one-time FY26 spending, one of the clearest remaining increases, totaling $39 per-person, is in the Police Department. This increase is due nearly entirely to salary increases tied to the new labor contract that was signed in August 2025.
- New Fire equipment: The Fire Department will receive a $12 per-person budget increase in the FY27 budget, primarily due to one-time equipment spending for self-contained breathing apparatuses.
- Arts & Culture cuts: The FY27 budget cuts the City’s arts and culture spending by nearly 30 percent due to cuts to the City’s contribution to the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
- Economic stimulus spending remains high: Spending on economic stimulus increased dramatically in last year’s budget, from $21 per-person to $64 per-person, and despite a small decrease, remains elevated in this year’s budget at $50 per-person. Much of the increase is due to the City’s Jump Start Philly program, which is designed to reduce tax liability for small businesses.
Sources: City of Philadelphia Adopted FY 2027 Budget in Brief and Adopted FY 2026 Budget in Brief.
Figures represent adopted funding in fiscal year 2027 for the City of Philadelphia’s General Fund budget, adjusted for population using the latest available data. Per-person spending totals are compared to the adopted General Fund budget for fiscal year 2026. Funding for the Early Childhood Education program was separated from the budget for the Department of Human Services and categorized separately.
Nick Hand is a data scientist and public sector technologist. He was director of the City Controller’s Finance, Policy and Data unit during Rebecca Rhynhart’s tenure.
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