Mayor Parker wanted to prove the doubters wrong. Philly could pull off a celebration worthy of America's 250th birthday.

• "I can remember feeling the pressure of folks saying, 'Philadelphia lacks ambition,'" she said days before the One Philly Unity Concert for America. "They're thinking too small … Where is the legacy project?"

Why it matters: The star-studded Fourth of July concert and fireworks show was certainly ambitious: It cost city taxpayers a whopping $15.5 million — more than double the cost of Welcome America's 2024 festivities.

• But Axios found the city didn't seek competing bids or proposals for the event before hiring politically connected ESM Productions, prompting scrutiny and calls for an investigation.

🎆 State of play: City procurement rules generally require a competitive process for major contracts.

• Instead of seeking new bids for the July 4 celebration, the Parker admin relied on a roughly yearlong agreement between the Philadelphia Authority for Industrial Development (PAID) and ESM Productions, according to an Axios review of city procurement filings and records obtained through a Right-to-Know request.
• The agreement was also used to produce the city's first-ever free New Year's Eve celebration last year, headlined by rap legend LL Cool J, Kevin Lessard, a spokesperson for Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), which manages PAID's day-to-day affairs, confirmed to Axios.

Reality check: This isn't how Philadelphia handled other major event contracts.

• Philadelphia bid out the Made in America festival in 2018 and 2022 — even though those events cost a fraction of this year's Fourth of July festivities.

Meanwhile, the Parker administration is seeking bids for a contract worth up to $75,000 to produce an economic impact report on this year's 250th anniversary events.

❓ What they're saying: Legal and government watchdog experts tell Axios the deal raises questions about whether the city followed competitive procurement requirements designed to promote fairness, transparency and the best value for taxpayers.

• "If this came by my desk, I would ask a lot of questions," UPenn law professor Richard Feder, a former chief deputy city solicitor, tells Axios.

⬇️ Keep reading below...

Financial records show the city never wrote ESM a check, instead routing payments through PAID, the redevelopment arm of city nonprofit PIDC.

• The payments appeared as "city contributions" to PAID, finance records show. But accompanying payment records told a different story: "ESM Productions for City's 4th of July Event."
• The city paid for the concert out of its Class 500 budget category, emails show — which is typically used for contributions to schools, nonprofits, tax payments and legal settlements.
• Feder says professional service contracts should come out of Class 200.

The other side: City officials say the work ultimately stemmed from a bidding process that occurred more than 18 months before Parker's July 4 plans and wasn't specific to the concert.

• Lessard tells Axios PAID simply acted as a "financial conduit" for the payments and that doing so "doesn't replace or bypass any procurement requirements," which remain the city's responsibility.

City attorney Andrew Richman told Axios that the city used an existing contract with PIDC to administer an "economic stimulus program."

• Under that agreement, PIDC "issued an RFP on behalf of the City for various on-call strategic support services," and ESM was selected.

The city declined to make officials available to answer detailed questions about the process. ESM didn't respond.

Yes, but: Feder says having "on-call experts" can be useful in emergencies, but not for signature events like the Fourth of July concert that the city had months to plan.

• Using the arrangement this way undermines "the spirit and intent" of the city's procurement requirements, Feder says.

"Why give less well-known contractors an opportunity to bid, when a contract can be handed to a favored, pre-cleared company without any need for transparency or competition?"

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The Committee of Seventy is calling for City Controller Christy Brady to examine whether the city followed "established procurement procedures" in awarding the concert work to ESM Productions.

• "The city has procurement rules for a reason," the group's president, Lauren Cristella, tells Axios. "If the established procurement procedures weren't followed, the City Controller should investigate."
• Brady didn't respond to Axios' calls requesting comment. Through a spokesperson, she referred Axios to a previous statement this year, when she said the city must be "accountable for every [taxpayer] dollar coming in and every dollar coming out" of city coffers.

📧 Behind the scenes: Internal emails show city officials directed PIDC to structure the arrangement the same way it had for the city's New Year's Eve celebration.

• In a March 25 email, city senior fiscal manager Dylan Sullivan wrote that PIDC officials should follow a "similar process," with PIDC invoicing the city through "Class 500" funds before paying ESM.

The intrigue: Parker's team remained deeply involved in planning the concert, records show, directing ESM on performers, stage production, sponsorships and marketing.

The bottom line: The Parker administration had its fingerprints all over the Fourth of July show. But on paper, PAID held the contract — an arrangement experts say deserves further scrutiny.

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💰 Philly officials discovered 13,355 homeowners fraudulently receiving property tax breaks through the homestead exemption, the city recently revealed.

• Those scofflaws were booted off the program and will be charged back taxes, which will bring in $33.5 million in additional revenue for the city and schools. (Go deeper)

⚠️ Commuter alert: SEPTA has begun running shuttle buses in place of trains on the M (Norristown High Speed Line) between Norristown Transit Center and Bridgeport Station. Shuttles will run through roughly mid-December, with additional changes scheduled in the coming weeks.

• The commuting detour makes way for the second phase of repairs to the 115-year-old Bridgeport Viaduct along the M line.

🏕️ Hickory Run State Park in the Poconos is the latest Pennsylvania park to get glamping sites, which include safari tents, string lights, mini-refrigerator and air conditioning.

• Two other state parks that are close to Philly also have the up-scale camping options — French Creek and Promised Land. (Spotlight PA)