{"id":312582,"date":"2026-10-23T08:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T08:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312582\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T08:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T08:58:11","slug":"philadelphia-election-2026-should-arts-and-culture-office-be-permanent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312582\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia election 2026: Should arts and culture office be permanent?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What questions do you have about the 2026 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

On Election Day<\/a>, Nov. 3, Philadelphians will vote on a possible change to the city\u2019s charter that would establish an office of arts and culture, to be called Creative Philadelphia.\n<\/p>\n

Wait \u2026 Doesn\u2019t the city already have one of those?\n<\/p>\n

Yes and no.\n <\/p>\n

In 1986, the city established such an office under then-Mayor Wilson Goode. The office has since gone through name changes, expanding and contracting with the waxing and waning of the city budget.\n<\/p>\n

But the office\u2019s existence has always relied on an executive order from the sitting mayor, which has made it vulnerable to being overhauled or eliminated at any time.\n<\/p>\n

Years after Goode\u2019s administration, Mayor John Street shuttered the office. His successor, Mayor Michael Nutter, re-established it with a different name. Nutter\u2019s successor, Mayor\u00a0 Jim Kenney, proposed eliminating the office<\/a> under budget pressure in 2020. Instead, he reduced its capacity and moved it under the Managing Director\u2019s Office.\n<\/p>\n

Mayor Cherelle Parker<\/a> made directorship of the arts and culture office a cabinet position, meaning that person would have a seat at the mayor\u2019s table. That person is Valerie Gay, who renamed the office Creative Philadelphia.\n<\/p>\n

But Parker never promised to make the office permanent, as that is beyond the power of the mayor\u2019s office.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What questions do you have about the 2026 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[25694,69,5550,71,70,3478,2299],"class_list":["post-312582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-elections-2026","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-city-hall","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-rally","tag-rue-landau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}