Mic check. Mic check. Mic check. Alright. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you all for coming tonight. My name is Michelle Goode. I'm with the Community Engagement Office. And, tonight during the presentation, it's gonna be a live stream. So if you have a question during the question and answer, please, raise your hand and we'll bring you a microphone because we wanna be sure it ends up on the recorded and the live stream. So I know this room, everybody can hear you, but we still need you to use a microphone for the for the live stream.
And so, council member is on his way, but we're gonna go ahead and get started, to respect your time. And so our city manager, Jay Chapa, will get us started. Well, good evening. It's great to be here. And tonight, we're gonna start off with this a little basically, a summary video outlining the overall budget, and then we'll go through some slides that provide a little bit more information. And then, we'll take any questions or requests that you might have, as we go forward. So we'll go ahead and get started with the video.
That's it. Fort Worth reflects smart strategic growth, benefiting from a fast road economy, safe and clean neighborhoods, and a high quality of life for all residents. This year, we reached a historic milestone, 1,000,000 residents strong. With that growth, the opportunity to invest wisely and plan sustainably for the future. For fiscal year twenty twenty six, this is proposing a $3,090,000,000 budget, including $1,100,000,000 general
fund focused on five city council priorities, community safety, infrastructure, community investment, economic development, and responsible growth. We are enhancing communities by adding neighborhood police officers, providing full year funding for a brand new EMS service, and launching new emergency management and communication department. And just as safety is essential, so is the infrastructure that keeps our city moving. We're prioritizing street maintenance and two major water treatment facility projects while strengthening staffing to
ensure crucial infrastructure projects are delivered on target. Neighborhoods remain at the heart of our plan. Supported by strengthening the priority repair neighborhood improvement programs, expanding the mobile tool shed program to assist more homeowners, and adds resources to animal shelters. By strengthening the places we live, we also lay the foundation for a thriving local economy. To boost economic growth, we're launching a small business development program and upgrading the Will Rogers Complex And Convention Center.
We're delivering for today and planning for tomorrow. This is reflected by updating service fees, water, stormwater, solid waste, environmental protection to improve flood mitigation and ensure sustainable operations. And through paying for funding, a small but powerful portion of your property tax, we're increasing investment in street and park maintenance. Over the past decade, Fort Worth has kept budget growth in check, thanks to consistent tax rate reductions. The proposed tax rate of 67¢ is a decrease from last year.
The typical household, the homestead exemption, will pay less in taxes this year. Out of the 67 property tax rate, over 52¢ funds operations and maintenance, and 14¢ goes debt. We maintain fiscally responsible strategy, strong credit rating, enabling city to fund upcoming bond programs. The city council will review the bond throughout August with the final vote on September 16. Okay. As I mentioned before, I'm Jay Chapa. I'm the city manager.
This is actually my first budget that was proposed to the city council as city manager, although I have been involved in 25 previous budgets, with the city. I started off as a budget analyst and, moved my way up through the organization. As we started this budget, one of the key things that we were dealing with were, a changing landscape on the property tax side of things, especially as it we're dealing with our increase in population. At the state level, the state been passing several bills that impact the ability of
the city's, property tax, or it has an impact on our property tax side. And then at the local level, especially in Tarrant County, the appraisal district, has changed how they have moved forward with residential properties. And so residential properties in existing residential properties with homestead exemptions were not being reappraised in in Fort Worth or in Tarrant County and Fort Worth specifically for us. So we were coming in. The idea was that we were gonna have this flat, we thought we're gonna have
a flat property tax or property valuation on the existing values. What ended up happening is we actually had a pretty good increase on new development on the new development side. On the existing values, overall, came in at 2.4%. And really, residential existing residential went down because a lot of folks ended up protesting their values that didn't get reappraised and actually went down in value. So overall, as you see through this budget, as we go through it, the proposal
actually reduces the tax rate a little bit. If you have a homestead exemption and you weren't reappraised this year and or you protested your values, your actual taxes to the city will actually go down, this coming year. But as we went forward, in order to make sure that we were gonna be able to, balance the budget, we didn't know where all that was gonna come out. I asked every department to start off by cutting, 1% out of their budgets, as we went forward. We also asked every department to produce 3% reduction packages in case, worst case scenario
showed up where the values were so low, that we were gonna have to cut additional dollars. Police and fire didn't have to meet that 3%. They had a smaller number to meet, but the department directors and departments did a great job, and we did move forward with a 1% cut, which allowed us then to bring in some additional, programs as we move forward, while still cutting the tax rate. Some of the key things that we made sure that happened is, I've said it many times, but nobody wants to live in a city that's not safe. So the number one paramount piece for the city of Fort Worth is to make
sure that we have a safe city. And, police, fire, and EMS, bringing in MedStar to the city as part of the fire department, was a big lift that just occurred, and it's part of this next year. We're having to fully fund that. You'll see that as we go through there. We also we also as a growing city, our infrastructure keeps getting older. We're growing faster than we can keep up to maintain it. And so we added funding for PAYGO, which is, maintenance dollars in the various areas, streets, parks, and as an example.
And then we and we, decided to move forward and expand what's called the housing prior repair program, which is basically for typically, it's senior citizens, lower income that have home issues, and they can't afford to fix it. The idea is to try to maintain and not lose this older housing quality or, housing stock, especially on the affordable side. And so folks can apply to have maintenance like plumbing issues, air conditioning issues, to
receive a grant and have the work done on their homes. That was expanded by half a million dollars. The mobile tool tool shed program, we had a pilot program going on through our code compliance, department. Our new director of code compliance brought this prod this program to the to Fort Worth, and the idea is to work with neighborhoods and work with citizens to help maintain their their properties and keep them in order to help beautify the neighborhoods. And so you could actually if you if you know somebody that that doesn't have a lawnmower, can't afford a lawnmower, can't afford a yard person, you could call the
city and request, the use of a lawnmower, the use of use of a weed eater. They'll bring it to you. You use it for the day. You call them up. They'll come pick it up the next day. And and that way, the idea is to try to have neighborhoods stay in better shape so that folks that can afford to keep their lawns, they'll have a a vehicle to do that. And we spread that we doubt we're expanding that citywide. It's been a really strong program in the neighborhoods where we're providing it. And then the last piece, again, it's on the code compliance side. As we grow, we have more and more issues with, with on the animal shelter
side with animals, loose animals, picking up animals, dealing with animals. And it's hard to keep up with that, without adding a lot of staff. And so what we're doing is the recommendation from the the our code compliance side is to contract with a group that we could bring in laborers that come and help when we have an overcrowding of the of the shelters, and we need to be able to have folks there. And then, finally, on an annual basis, keeping up to make sure that we can keep employees with the city.
We do have a proposal to have a, increase for employee pay at 4% average. It would be merit based, like we typically do, and it runs between 37%, but an average of 4% overall. So when we put a budget together, the city council adopted some strategic priorities a few years ago, and we try to put the budget together under these different pillars as we move forward and and make sure that everything that we fund is leading to one of these one or more of these, priorities. On the community safety side, I mentioned the emergency medical service, EMS.
This is the full funding of MedStar coming over to the city. The transition happened July 1. Last year's budget or the current year's budget included only three months of that funding. Going to the full year, it's a full $87,000,000, funding is included. Of that of that, there's a subsidy of $22,000,000 from the from the general fund to cover the amount that the remedies don't cover currently. The goal is over time, hopefully, that program will end up collecting enough to cover its itself as it goes forward.
We also created a new emergency management and communications department. That's basically, the group that would respond to disasters, emergency calls. They also do the 911 phone calls. We're consolidating those those call centers to be more efficient as we move forward. And then finally, we added police officers, neighborhood police officers, 8. The police department went through a overall study, eight, and, to redo the beats. As we've grown, they had to go through and look at the overall beat map.
And as they went through it, there was eight more beats, added to the the city's footprint because of the size of the city, the growth. And so, eight police officers are being added so we can have eight more neighborhood police officers there. And then the we had requests from schools for additional, school resource officers, and so two are being added on the school resource officer side. That cost is split with the ISD's $50.50. So the city pays for half of the police officer's cost, and and the school the school will pay for the other half. On the infrastructure side, I mentioned the street maintenance.
We we added dollars on the PayGo side, and our our street folks tell us that we need approximately a $100,000,000 a year to be able to stay up with the maintenance required so it doesn't get into total disrepair that that requires a full reconstruction. We're at about what is it? 58,000,000 currently? About 60,000,000 55 to $60,000,000 a year. So the goal is to increase that till we get to that full 100,000,000. And once we get there, hopefully, that could be stagnant as we go forward.
And so this year, we were able to add some dollars on the PAYGo side to try to move that up. We also added funding on the capital project delivery side or added personnel and actually are used having more dollars. What we were doing on a lot of these projects, is we were outsourcing the project management with private entities. As we looked at that, those costs kept going up faster than it would cost for city employees to do it. So we're bringing though that work in house where city employees will actually manage the projects, and we'll that'll give us more dollars to actually put infrastructure on the ground,
streets. It's about a 20 to 25% savings. Is that your estimate? And so so we're adding folks, but we're actually costing us less overall so we can use more of those dollars to actually, put it into asphalt, put it into park system, and that that kind of thing. And then, keep talking about us growing fast. We are growing fast. We're we're still averaging about 20,000 people a year. That's a small city coming into Fort Worth every year. And in order to stay with up to that growth and in order to be able to meet the needs of that growth, especially on the water and wastewater side,
where we have some major projects that are moving forward. Eagle Mountain Water Treatment Plant up north next to Eagle Mountain Lake is being expanded, to be able to provide the necessary, water to that growing infrastructure up north. And then Marys Creek, basically, the sewer plant on the West Side is being is moving forward for construction in order for that, that wastewater treatment plant to be built to be able to handle all the wastewater from the West side of town that we come in through. Currently, the city only has one, wastewater treatment plant.
It's way far in East Fort Worth right by Arlington. All of our current basically, all of our current sewage flows to that plant where everything's growing out to the West. In order to get all that to that plant, the cost of building pipes through the middle of town, all that would be enormous, and that's why a new plant was needed. On the community investment side, I mentioned the housing priority repair program. We added half a million dollars there. The idea here, again, is to try to make sure that we're, helping to continue
expend the life of affordable housing that's in town, existing existing homeowner homeownership in in different parts of town. I mentioned the mobile tool shed, that's being expanded citywide, and then the animal service piece. We also are increase or continuing our neighborhood improvement program, which is basically a different neighborhood that needs a lot of TLC is chosen on annual basis, and the city goes in, works with the neighborhoods to improve infrastructure issues, whether it be sidewalks, lighting,
those kind of things. So we're continuing that program. There'll be a new neighborhood improvement, program neighborhood this year. And then the far northwest library will be opening toward the end of the next fiscal year. So we need to, hire the folks that are gonna be running that that operation and be there, the librarians and the like. And so they need to come in a few months before it actually opens, so that they can get trained and, be ready to once it opens, be ready to to take over the facility. On the economic development side, you probably heard it in the in the, news, we
the city did away with what they're calling the DEI programs, but it was really one of the major components of that was our MBE program on the city's procurement side. The city council directed us to to work in creating a small business program that was a a and and, basically, there's funds to be able to to do that in partnership with the local chambers, the the Fort Worth Chamber, the Hispanic Chamber, and the Black Chamber, where they're gonna assist us in making sure that we're we're helping smaller businesses in town grow as we go forward.
We put some some funding in there. We're growing so quickly. We last did a full economic development strategic plan in '20, 1617. Since then, we've grown by over a 100,000, maybe a 120,000 people. And the since COVID, the economics and the economy overall has completely changed Where that plan, you know, talks about trying to, expand retail, now everybody's buying from from Amazon, and you have less and less brick and mortar things going on.
So we need to update that plan, so that's that's in the in the budget. On the tourism side and using our public events funding, which is not the general fund, we are you might have seen this. The city is moving forward with improvements in the Will Rogers Memorial Complex. That that facility overall will be a 100 years old in 2035. And so we're, the city overall is trying to move forward to make sure that it stays relevant and is in good shape, continue to bring all the shows that come to town and bring that money from visitors.
And then, the economic development initiatives fund is a fund that we use to, help bring projects here and or redevelopment projects, by the city providing incentives, and or assistance in infrastructure and the like. On the responsible growth, this is kind of a catchall. So we like to think that we what we do, is that we're we're responsibly we're growing so quickly that we're trying to do it in the best way possible and so that it's sustainable long term. So we are moving forward. We've been, this past year, moving the comprehensive plan.
We're gonna continue to do that till we finish it this coming year. Our our facility I mean, our our fleet keeps aging. It's again, the city's growing faster than we can, that we can keep up, but the vehicles, we added some funding to replace a a a larger percentage of our vehicles that are already obsolete. We did the city council approved last year, pay a pay plan study. The city especially a lot of non civil service departments, we have high vacancy rates and or turnover.
Part of that is that we weren't keeping up with the market on pay. So there's a pay study going on now to determine, all the all the positions in the city and what people make or what the positions pay to ensure that we can keep up with that. There are some funds that that should be completed about May this coming year. So there are some funds in there so that we can start making some adjustments based on the pay plan to to, pay schedules. And then we're recommending some changes, mostly increases or just a a new a new
way to do it on the on the water side for some of the fees. The water the water side, we're we're creating a new tier structure. It's not really changing the rate, but it's capturing as we're growing so fastly. And you might have read some of the articles about, the need to conserve more as we go forward. The the t the tier structures are being changed so that it really doesn't change the rates, but it adds more people on the higher on the higher rates that currently are there. So hopefully they use less water going forward. The environmental protection fund is, a recommendation to increase that by is it 75¢?
For residential. Yeah. For residential, 75¢ a a a month. On the solid waste side, this is your waste your trash pickup. There has not been an adjustment, to this, to this fee since 02/2003. And I think the adjustment that at that time was to go down by 50¢. Right? Went down in 2014. Oh, 2014, it went down. And so that. Yeah. So it hasn't gone up since 02/2003. There's no way for us to keep sustaining that current cost.
Our landfill is getting, more and more filled up. At some point, we're gonna need a new landfill, and there's no way to keep up with the the cost without adjusting those rates. And then stormwater, there is a recommended increase in stormwater fee by $30.35 cents a month. For residential? Yeah. For the average residential, it's 35¢ a month. So most people are always interested in the general fund and the property tax. I mentioned the growth that we saw, 3.4%
overall growth in, in the in the taxable value, in existing. The majority of that had to do with commercial. The residential was generally flat, because of the not tad not appraising, this year. We do have we do have taxpayers that are in Denton County, Wise County, Parker County, and Johnson County. They did have valuations, changed, but the majority, 96% or so of our value is
on Tarrant County. And then I mentioned the the increase in the new construction value. That was a big number for us, the two and a half percent, that really helped us, move forward. A lot of cities, like Arlington, like Plano are actually increasing their tax rates because they're they have very little opportunities to to have any increase in the new construction side. So I mentioned the recommended tax rate. Currently, it's 67.25. Recommendation is to drop it by a quarter cent. And what we do here is we separate the the tax rate into, the operations
and maintenance side, and then you have the debt service side. So 14.75¢ goes to pay debt that the city issues, for various projects and infrastructure. And then the operations and maintenance side, we further split that for we call PAYGo. The capital piece is PAYGo piece, the pay as you go. And we have 7 and a quarter cents go to that, and then the other 45¢ goes to actual operations and maintenance. So for the eleventh year the eighth year out of the last 11, the property tax rate is being recommended to be reduced.
On the overall citywide, budget, so this was this was just the, yeah, these are taxable values. On the overall city's budget, when you include all the funds, so you include the, general fund, which is the property tax, sales tax, where police and fire are basically in, the debt service fund, special revenues fund that has CCPD and a few others,
the gas lease, and that's a small one. But enterprise service funds, that's where the water department for instance is. And then internal service funds are departments within the city or funds within the city that actually charge other departments for the work they do, like our fleet services, for instance. Because they work on the fleets owned by all the other departments. So the overall budget of the city is recommended to, increase by 300,000,000 from two point basically 8, billion dollars to almost $3,100,000,000.
That's a 10% increase. But when you look at where those increases are happening, they're primarily happening in the debt service fund and the special or the, yeah, special revenue projects. And those are are tied to some very large projects that are going on. I mentioned the water facilities, the wastewater tramp plant, the water plant. That's where the biggest the biggest increases are happening. And then the convention center, which is actually funded by tourist funds. So it's not any local funds. It's all the hot hotel operating taxes.
That's a big portion of this, overall increases. On the general fund, it's $1,100,000,000, the total the total funding. And that's an increase from about 1,060,000,000. So it's an increase about 48,000,000. You'll see that down here. And you can see the the revenues, and then you can see the the cost. And you see the actual general operating and maintenance, dollars actually went down. I mentioned the cuts that we made.
And so the increases that are really tied to, salary and benefits that are a lot of those are fixed when it comes to, especially, police and fire. So when you look at the general fund and the growth, I mentioned the increase about, dollars 48,000,000, 35 of that $48,000,000 growth is tied is tied to public safety. The $20,000,000 in the EMS subsidy by the general fund, 10,200,000.0 that is really tied to salaries from the meet and confer contract with the Police
Officers Association, and 5,000,000 on the collective bargaining contract with the Firefighter Association. The remaining $12,000,000 under the workforce, I mentioned the pay for performance and the pay the pay study implementation. That's about $12,000,000 of that. And then the additional PAYGO funding that was, included of about $4,600,000. On the enterprise fund side, these are the the increases that we talked about before. You see a big increase really in the water wastewater, almost 10%, nine and a
half percent. And a big a big part of that is tied to all the capital that has to be put into the systems as we continue to grow and expand and build new facilities. Solid waste is the the cost of just, you know, picking up our our trash. The stormwater utility was mentioned. There's a small increase to cover a fee to cover that cost. And the the other two are not really don't really impact the the general public. It's it's the, municipal airports and the municipal parking fund.
On the special revenue side, you see the various entities that are or groups that make that up. The crime control and prevention district is growing by about 2.6%. That's really tied to our our estimate for the new sales tax to be, collected this coming year. And then public events, a lot of that's tied to the Will Rogers Complex. So this is where I'm gonna turn it over to our assistant director in the lab, Christy, and she can give you details on how it impacts the the budget
impacts the average taxpayer and a few more things on the numbers side. Alright. So just a couple things here I'll highlight for you. At the top, we have the average taxable home. So this is with the homestead exemption applied. And it basically shows that quarter cent reduction in property tax will result in about a $20 savings for the typical homeowner as calculated with that, that average taxable home value. And then you'll see the fees that Jay just mentioned.
So we are seeing increases in fees in a a number of areas there. So the impact for, for the year for the homeowner is about a $36 difference. So about $56 in increase in fees, $20 reduction in property tax. So the impact is about $3 per month, per homeowner. So that's how that's how the budget breaks out for you all. Just a couple of other things here I'll mention. So this is our capital improvement plan. Every year, we do an update to our five year plan. And you'll see there's there's a a big number there for FY twenty six for
the upcoming budget year, and that's really based on the work that the water department will be doing on those new facilities and then also, the big public events projects that are scheduled to begin in f y twenty six. So that's the big increase that you see there, and then you see it kinda tapers off as we go. We do an update to the plan every year, so those those numbers are changing depending on our needs as we go. This is, this shows you how we're using those cash pay as you go dollars for maintenance on different projects. It's kinda small, so I'll just walk you through it.
The top line is the transportation and public works department. The blue bar is what they have in the current fiscal year, and then the green bar is what's proposed for next fiscal year. So you'll see that they're growing a little bit faster than the other, the other groupings. And so that's to address some of the issues that we have with street maintenance in the city. So they're gonna get a little bit bigger share of that, cash for maintenance this year. And then the second group is property management and then neighborhood services, IT, park and recreation, and then community partnerships.
The park and recreation department is also getting a little bit more for maintenance this year than the other groups because we have some needs there as well. And then this summarizes the total budget. So you can see see there that our, total proposed budget for this fiscal year is 4,400,000,000.0. So you can see the the capital, that we just looked at a moment ago and then also the operating fund that Jay discussed. And then just wanna remind you, we do have additional meetings coming up. So if you have a friend or neighbor or family member who couldn't be here tonight but might be interested, you can encourage them to come to one of the
upcoming meetings. They can also watch streaming live and submit questions live, and we'll we'll be able to answer those. So plenty of opportunities for participation, still remaining. And then we're coming to our budget hearings and budget adoption, which is scheduled for September 16. So that's what we have upcoming. And I think now we have plenty of time for questions. Alright. I'm gonna ask you to use the mic so we can catch you on streaming. Okay? Okay. Oh, what's that? I'll say something really quick. Oh, so sorry. Yeah. Please. Hey, Harvey. What's he gonna say? Hey, Michael Crane, y'all's council rep.
I'll say this. Thanks, Jay, for that presentation and Christy. What I hear and if you don't know Christie Dolan, my office, that keeps me running and y'all, might reach out to her. What I hear consistently is our streets are horrible. What are we doing about that? Right? What I hear consistently is our trash isn't being picked up, what's happening there. And what I hear is when I call 911, I want someone to show up and answer the call and figure out what the issue is and solve the problem. So I think if you look at this budget, that's where the priorities are and where we're putting dollars. We've also lowered the tax rate, which I'm pretty proud of, Jay, of doing that and and raise your hand if your staff here.
It's like, hey. It's more than half the room. This is how important this is to listen to y'all to make sure that we hear what you're what's happening. This is a whole process. It's a whole year process. As soon as we've passed this budget, whatever it looks like, in a in a few weeks, they will start the process again for next year. And so it's a whole back and forth in a year process. So it's not something that comes in overnight, but it's listening to concerns. It's listening across the board. So thank you all for the being here tonight. Thanks for the staff for being here tonight and the work. I mean, you got your your police fire. You got everybody here. So, I want you to know that we're listening, and we're trying to do what
we can to make the city keep, running and be better. So thank you. And Question. Thank you. You're welcome. My name is Michael Cohen. I'm Precinct Chair thirteen forty seven. Human Resources, from what I understand, will receive 12 authorized employee positions and a million 2 from the DEI department. Most DEI employees will be transferred to this department. This raises questions about the continuation of DEI policies in city government.
Is that the case here? Where is the tax savings? In my summation, this ideology, DEI, is comparable to the race laws of of Nazi Germany. Merit and American exceptionalism should always be our goal. So the diversity inclusion department, was eliminated going into this next budget year. And as I mentioned, we have a small business development program that we're creating, so several of the employees from that department will be taking taking up working in that.
It's a new it's a new program. We'll be working in that in the economic development department side. And then the what you're referring to on the HR side, though those are programs that are federally mandated that are not going away, like, fair housing, like ADA, the American Disabilities Act, and and what's that? Fair housing. Yeah. Fair housing. So all these are federal programs that were part, federally mandated programs that were part
of in the DEI. We had them before we had a DEI department. There were programs that were here. They got moved into the DEI department when that was created in 2018 or so. And now that it's gone, we can't we don't get rid of them because we need to have them under federal law, and they've got moved into the HR department. So that's It's a continuation. It's not a continuation. Those programs were here beforehand. They're required by the federal law for us to have. So people can't so we have the we have a group. Let me let me give you an ex an idea, an example. You go in to to rent an apartment, and the person behind the desk doesn't
rent it to you because you're over 50 years old. They don't want old people in the apartments. That's an that that's discrimination. The law. Right. The city the law. Right. The city program to review that, and the complaints come into that office that was part of the DEI department, it's now in the HR department. So those those got kept. Before it was in the DEI department, it was in Community. Community. It was in a different department that doesn't exist anymore when it got city got reorganized a while back. But it's it's not it's not a program that's new.
It's a program that's been around since the sixties or seventies. And as we did away with the DEI department, we did away with all those other programs that were part of DEI. But those that we had to keep that are part of federal law that we do, like ADA, we have a group that does the ADA requirements on buildings and the like. They're part of the HR. Yes. So what what what we're Are tax dollars funding the chambers of commerce and what what what they do? The black and brown chambers of commerce? And also the Fort Worth Chamber.
So all three chambers, what they're doing since we're creating a new small business development program, what they're doing is providing services to the city to this is new. Yes. And it's not race based. It's not ethnicity based. It's open to to any small business that wants to, assistance in in getting bonding, in getting, work with the city, how do they qualify, all those kind of things. Those the chambers are helping us. Instead of us hiring a bunch of employees to run this new program, they're basically
an arm of the city helping us do that. How did this program come with that? It was as we get we got rid of the MBE program. The request was that we have something to help supplement small businesses in Fort Worth, and that we assist small businesses since we're doing away with the e MBE program that was there to assist small business minority owned business enterprises. And so the city council requested that we come over to them. Businesses that's under EPI that's shipped over to No.
The city There's a it's not a it's not a minority based program. It's a small business program. So the SBA has a small business threshold. Right? And so that's the threshold for the small businesses that the city will be assisting to help them get work with the city, how to, again, getting bonding. Would the idea is to try to grow Fort Worth businesses here locally. It's not DEI based. Can I say something there? Sure. I just wanted to say. So I kinda see where you're going. I'll say from day one, have been smart supporting small businesses.
So I'm glad this is back on the table. If you watched my comments from June 24 as we were going through this process, I said to Jay, it feels like we've lagged in this, and I'm gonna give a lot of credit to Dana Bergdorf and her team that we looked at the systems and processes that held small businesses back. And we were went from a one on one, counter to a of almost a five. This is the Institute for Justice. There they surveyed our programs and looked and said, we we have created barriers to entry. There were 20 pieces of paper you had to fill out to set up a business here. How do we collapse that? There they weren't necessarily on the systems and processes.
This one stop we create a whole website, one stop business shop. So I'm pretty proud of this because it doesn't matter what your color is. It doesn't matter any of that. It matters that you wanna step up and open a business in Fort Worth, Texas. So we're looking at that from across the board. So, yes, the Hispanic Chamber gets money. The the, African American Chamber gets money. The the Downtown Chamber, Forward Chamber, Commerce gets money to help us implement that program. Black and brown. I don't really care. I want people to succeed. Sure. And I do too. Mhmm. And it was Yeah.
They built their own business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. This is not a handout. It's a hand hand it it it it says it helps with our our bureaucracy that the government has set up, and I'll say we are probably saving tax dollars by what we're doing. You're $36 there. Yeah. That's the end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I I get what your point is. I'll say across the board, though. I I get it. And if we you see, we've lowered the tax rate. But across the board, I think you look across what we will put back on the table that that will help subsidize your streets, your roads, your police, your fire,
and all the other things that you expect. I think it's across the board actually the right thing to do. Craig Shafer. Couple, quick questions. One is in looking at the revenue stream, I didn't see any income from hotelmotel tax that I thought was gonna be going into the Convention Center. That was that was listed under the do we have the presentation? You can throw it back out there. You see where it says public events? Yes. That's the public events department. All their funding comes from basically two sources, the hotel, motel tax and the rental
car fees at DFW Airport that we get a portion of. Second question. What impact on, on revenue and and growth is Taylor Sheridan having in in Fort Worth and all the projects that he's creating here? Well, I don't have an exact number. I know the film commission is is looking to see how we can maybe come up with a way to track that, but they're having a positive a really big positive impact. It seems like. On the sales side sales tax side specifically, and higher.
And are we is that impacting the state revenue that we're getting then as well? Well, we get we get our our 1p in general fund sales tax, and then we get half a penny for CCPD and half a penny for the transit. And then the other 6 and a quarter cents goes to the state. So, yeah, it's it's impacting the whole piece, because they buy they buy most of their stuff they're buying, they're buying local for sets and all those kind of things. And then hiring local people, in order for them to be able to get those incentives from the state, they have to hire a big percentage of them have to
be Texans. So they're they're creating a whole new industry through that alone. And the last my last comment is what impact and and how can we adjust sales tax revenue so we can do a better job of funding mass transit and and doing a cooperative mass transit in all of North Texas. So, yeah, so Fort Worth only has a half cent sales tax that goes to mass transit. Right? Dallas County and a lot of those areas over there have a full penny.
And we have the other half cent going to CCPD. Well, under state law, the only we only have that 1¢ that we can designate for various things. So the only way you could increase that mass transit side is to decrease the CCPD side. Right? So for police, I'm not sure who would be voting for a reduction of police funding. So I don't know that ship to sell. Although there was a bill introduced in the legislature during this special session to allow local local governments at on a vote of the citizens to add another penny of
capacity to the sales tax side. It would be up to the individuals of the cities to do that. It didn't get anywhere, but it was introduced. I hadn't I hadn't seen that since 1992 when I started, doing stuff in the public side. I've never seen that bill even introduced. So, so they would have it would take something like that. Is there any any movement though on a regional mass transit plan? I think there's been some discussions, down the state legislature. They actually, passed some bills or or worked on some bills to to cap DART
so it kinda set things back. The discussions kinda get held back because DART has to now rework how they're spending their funds. So Yes. You said you were gonna contract out some of the animal control? I I mean, I'm a volunteer for the, for the animal control as a foster. Maybe talking about the micro But, what kind of work would those contractors to do? Where would you get those contractors? I'll turn that over to our director of code compliance. Look at that. We got more than one mic.
Can you hear me? Yeah. What that is is our our temporary contract labor. So when we have our kennel techs, which is the highest attrition we have where we just go through people because that's the most challenging job we have. They're cleaning up dog poop and get the kennel techs. Yeah. And so what happens is is we have the most attrition in that position, and we contract with Presbyterian Night Shelter and Goodwill to any of them to that are trying to get back into the, you know, workforce, and we hire them on a temporary labor. And after six months, if they if they do well, they get hired in to,
you know, be part of that. But it's kinda the glue that holds, all the kennel cleaning together is that contract labor, and that's what they increased. It it's the kind of job people don't wanna take. So yes, sir? I would like to, y'all quit giving tax money away. It's not y'all's to give. Davy Crockett would have said that, in the halls of congress when he was a congressman from, I think, Kentucky or Tennessee, y'all gonna give $20,000,000 to H E B. Okay? That's what I heard on the news this week.
Okay. If you're gonna give $20,000,000 away, you're gonna have to make up that $20,000,000, So you're really equivalently losing $40,000,000. It's algebra or it's accounting. Debits equal credits. What you do to one side, you have to do to the other. And then I have a real complaint about code enforcement. They're equivalently the the general Worth and general, Tarrant, how they just ran over the Indians. The code enforcement doesn't do anything but run over the people that are the most
vulnerable, that don't have the the wherewithal to, defend themselves. And then what we need instead of code enforcement, we need more police protection. And I'll say that, police protection, we had someone one of my tenants, he tested new engines and, for that were imported. And he had, one night, three motorcycles. They ripped the side of the wall off the steel panel and stole three motorcycles.
We went back and repaired the thing, and in two more nights, they ripped another panel off and stole two more motorcycles. And it took a week to get the police out there. Okay? And one of my attendants had his welding trailer stolen. It was tied to the the dock locked. It had a one inch cable running through the tires, and, they he had removed the hitch so they couldn't be stolen, and they stole it.
Anyway, they cut the lock. We had dogs in there. That's the only thing that kept the bandits out. Okay? Code enforcement shows up with two policemen, six code, animal control people, and two people from code enforcement. But what we need is police protection where you can get a policeman out there and not wait for a week when someone steals something like that. I mean, you shouldn't have to wait that long. I agree. The chief is here, this evening, but I'm we'd like to I'd like to know
where where that happened, if we can get your information. What does transportation include? Right. It entails streets. It entails street lights. Everything that allows things to move. Anything to do with streets. No. No. Transportation and public works is the overall department. It's shortened to transportation. But, We have a question here. Thank you. My name is Ken Bowers. Had a question. It's kind of a technical question, more of regulation. Does the city regulation prevent street repair immediately after maintenance work done on sewers, waterworks,
etcetera, water lines? There seems to be no inspections of, road repair after construction. Contractors do not meet any standard known in the third world for repairs recognized in any municipal area. The street repair, they patch it, they walk off, and you can sit there and put a time lapse camera on it and watch it the patch deteriorate. Westridge has been a bungle since back in the days of the Barnett Shale when trucks were going over. It has not been the American Dental Association approves these roads because your teeth are
falling out and everybody. Just ask them the question. So So we do have inspectors. And if you have any specific areas, Lauren West Ridge Edge Show. Yeah. So good at good evening. I'm Lauren Preyer. I'm the director for transportation and public works, and we also have Mary Hannah. She is our program manager for Neighborhood Street, so she's perhaps more familiar with this particular project. But as I understand it, it's actually a fifty fifty project, where TPW coordinates with the water department. So the water department has a, Chris, I believe, a water main being replaced in
those neighborhoods, a significant water line. And so And it blew up right in the middle of, Interimonde. I lost the hot water heater now. It blew literally blew the the surface of the roadway Mhmm. With the train out. So all of our construction projects are inspected as Jay had previously said. Perhaps you were referring to pothole repairs. So potholes are repaired in the city within forty eight hours. We do make sustainable repairs. If in event of a snow ice emergency or significant weather event, we will do
temporary repairs and come back just to catch up. No. I'm sorry. You you don't. You do temporary repairs on top of temporary repairs on top of temporary repairing. Eventually, sometime, you gotta repave the streets at some point. When that when that point in time ends, can So so I'll just say this, and Lauren, you know this too. For six years, eight years, Westwood was a a huge problem. You drop drive over, coffee spilling all over you, etcetera.
Because it was a sewer project and it had to line up, number of years ago, they would go do repave and do a whole street. This is way before my time. And then they'd come in and sew it like, oh, we need to repair. We need to actually rip it all out. So what you're reading, I think, is what was in response to that, a previous council previous councils that said, wait. Don't do a project that's a major street repair before you repair the sewer if you know the sewer needs to be repaired. And so After you do the repair Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think what's the same on that? Al Al Al Capone?
That's exactly what's gonna happen on Westridge. Yes. This this century? I hope so. Listen. It's been a pain in my ass for this long too, and I get it where you are. But listen. I I was getting those calls even when I was running the office before, but I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm on that street all the time. Yeah. There's gonna be some coordination somewhere. You've got it. Yes. And, actually, sir, we'll be talking with council on September 23 about how water department and TPW coordinate on our projects. It should have been done 10 ago. Ago. I Twenty years ago. Understood. But there was a sewer to have ketchup.
We get it all that we can talk offline about the technicalities how this project mess up, or match up. But I'll say way before my time, they were they would paint the street and then come along and realize they have to rip it back up to put sewer in. So they've had to And that would I I would somebody should be shot today. Well, that's the same. That was that's why I think staff is all talking. I'll say it was so tight. They weren't actually talking. That's what's happening now. That's why Westridge took Well, it it often in our construction projects, we have, you
know, separate contractors under the same contract for paving or utility work. Right? So they will likely get to a certain point with utility work, the water main repairs, and then have a separate contractor mobilized for the paving. Alright. What I'm talking about, I used to do this for a job. You got three or four people doing something. Somebody in the city has got to coordinate each one of those functions. Correct. They have to do it. You don't just say, hey. You go ahead and pave that. Hey. You go ahead and dig a hole. You go out and stand by the hole on your shovel with 14 other guys
and watch two supervisors. Watch one guy down in the hole to dig it. Somebody in this has to have supervision has to come from the city. Correct. And I very rarely saw anybody from the city out working on Edge Hill or West Ridge. Oh, West Ridge couldn't even go up and down. And I'll be happy to introduce you the folks that do supervise such activities. To piggyback off of this gentleman over here, Stephen Keith, lifelong resident of Fort Worth, licensed real estate broker. I've served on the Appraisal Review Board a couple of years and dealt with property
values and things. And we all it's great we all experienced the appreciation. But when you the tax rate of Fort Worth is much much I've had numerous people ask me, why is the tax rate so high? I said, I wish I could tell you. I wish I could explain that to you, but I can't. I can I can explain it to you? I mean, Dallas is cheaper. Keller is way cheaper than Fort Worth. Everybody's cheaper than Fort Worth. If you wanna do something that really benefit the the citizens of Fort Worth would lower the tax rate, and I know I'd be a lot happier because of the
taxes I pay on my investment property is tremendous. And I it So I can I can explain it to you? So in nineteen ninety, ninety one, and '92, the city of Fort Worth lost 48% of its property values because of the downturn of the oil business and because of the defense cutbacks. And so the property tax rate in those years grew all the way to 97
and a half cents. So in nineteen ninety seven, ninety eight, ninety nine, the tax rate was 97 and a half cents. You could buy a home in Ridgely in 1994 for the engineers were all leaving because they didn't have a job anymore here, and they were selling it for what they owed on their on their notes so they could go to their new job in Atlanta or their new job in St. Louis. And so people are buying homes for $64,000 $55,000 in Ridgely. They went straight to the appraisal district and said, this is what I paid for
my house. And so all of the Fort Worth's values were depressed. The city drop went from 4,200 employees to 2,600 employees in two years. I'm just telling you the facts. So 97 and a half 97 and a half cents. Fort Worth's values were depressed. It's taken all this time for the values to be going up that's allowed them the tax rate to have gone down by a third from 97 and a half cents to where it is now 67¢. And and about three years ago, the market exploded and people were selling their houses
for I mean, I lived in a neighborhood off of Brian Irvin, and a house in my neighborhood went for a $100,000 more than the asking price. Right. But I mean, values Appraisal district can only go through the roof. So so did so did property values as well. I mean, I I I I get The appraisal can only go up 10%. So and and the state has capped. And see, that's that's another problem because as an investor, an owner not owner nonoccupied property, there is no limit. I mean, I've had I've had property I've had property values increase 5050%, 75%, 80,
almost a 100%. Right. And there's no there's no there's no, 10%. You know? I know homestead rule. That's law. But there is no no, you know, safety net for me. I understand. But I'm saying that based on how the the city's overall tax rate, about 60% of the tax base is is residential. And so when you put everything together, that's why it's gone down to 67¢. It wasn't, like I said, 97 and a half cents. Well and and I understand that you wanna you wanna, you wanna give businesses incentive to to come here, but if you give them a tax abatement, I mean, I've
paid taxes. I'll never I mean, you guys are my silent partner. I never pay that. That property tax bill never goes away. I can't ever pay it off. I'll be paying that for for as long as I own these properties. That's for all of us. And so, I mean, that I mean, where's my tax abatement? I'd like to have I mean Well, if you invest $300,000,000 of new new value that doesn't exist completely stopped, came to a standstill. I mean, it it it didn't it didn't slow down. It stopped. It hit the wall. So I'll I'll give you the idea behind those incentives is to bring value that
wasn't gonna be here but for the incentive. So if a company's bringing 300,000,000, a billion dollars of investment Mhmm. And they're gonna pick Fort Worth or pick Plano or pick Irving or pick Denver, that's when the incentives come in. But if if you give them the incentive and and then okay. That just like the gentleman over here said, that's gotta be made up somewhere. No. It didn't exist before. We didn't that when you give an incentive, say 40% incentive on a billion dollar value, you still have $600,000,000 of new value that didn't exist before.
So that's all new dollars. The city never provides an incentive and never uses existing dollars for an incentive. Your your your H E B 20,000,000 that doesn't exist. We're not giving H E B an incentive. I don't know where you heard that, but it's just not true. It's just not true. Just telling you. In the constitution that the court of entry can't have an advantage for the all these It it's the same thing as homestead exemptions that are provided.
It's the same concept. Hello. My name is Jenny. I live in Ridgely Hills. My question is, I think I saw a six and a half percent increase to parks and recreation. Was that correct for 2026? In their budget? Yes. Yes. Okay. So my question is, what percent of that includes flushing toilets at our parks? There's our parks director. Got it. I'll gladly give this away. Good question. Thank you. It has been a long standing park policy that we do not put flushing toilets in parks except for an athletic complex, and that policy actual percentage on that, but
it's one of the, initiatives. I'm a new park director. I started in February, and I've been talking to my assistant city manager about flushing toilets as one of our new initiatives that we wanna show to the public. We wanna raise the bar for parks in our cities, and so we're gonna our first one will probably go in next year, and it's gonna go next to Dream Park and Trinity Park. And from there, we'll be branching out and adding flushable toilets in other parks as well. Okay. Good. Because last time I checked, a first world country has flushing toilets for young children and soap and water. We agree with you.
And Dream Park has been in very bad shape. I have young children, and we have stopped going there because it's in bad shape, and they can't go potty. So I really would love some PR for free. That p public relations means for free. So don't spend money on this in your budget. But to let people know, you can bring your kids to the park again because if you have children, they're out of diapers. You get to the park. You've packed your car. You go to the bathroom. You get there. Five minutes in, I gotta go to the bathroom.
You leave the park. So I really appreciate that. And please don't spend any money on advertising. Public relations is for free. And let everybody know. Because I can guarantee you, businesses don't move to our city because our parks are gross. The kids can't go to the bathroom. We know we have bad schools. We're working on it. Whatever. But that would be a really big deal, and I super appreciate it. And thank you. Thank you. Hi. Can you hear me? Mhmm. My name is Mary Frances Wood. And, sir, I'm I'm sorry. I didn't hear what your name is. I'm Jay Chapa.
Okay. Are you from Fort Worth? Not originally, but I've been here for over thirty years. Okay. Well, first of all, I wanna, point out something, is that the crash didn't happen in the nineties. It was, the late eighty seven and '88. My family is very heavily involved in real estate residential and the real estate you're talking about in the neighborhoods that affected GD. And net worth went down 75%. It was not in the nineties. So I'd I'd get your numbers right on that because I lived it.
Number two, I wanna follow-up on this nice gentleman here and the one over in the blue plaid shirt because it seems we're in the same industry. And today, I encountered when I went to one of my investment properties, which I have numerous. My my husband and I that we got from my family. And I was in a very threatening position threatened position. And it's been gone ongoing at an empty house by a neighbor. I called the police. They seemed very interested. The non emergency line seemed very interested in my story.
And then they said, oh, let me connect you to the person you need to speak to. And guess what I got? A rotating round and round push one for this, two for animal control, three for solid waste and all this BS. I was in a bad situation. I pay a lot of property taxes like this gentleman does and this gentleman over here and most of y'all in this room. And And you called 911? No. I called the regular one because I didn't there was no gun involved.
And I had no response. So I finally got in my car to get to safety and left a situation. These people have stolen from me. They have been an ongoing nuisance in that neighborhood for several years. It's an owner occupied block besides my house and that one. And I want I wanna know why I'm paying the I I don't even wanna go into the number that I pay in property taxes in this town because it's flooring. Like this gentleman and this gentleman over here and most of you.
And I can't get someone to to answer my phone call for when I'm in danger at one of my properties. No. They don't. I called 91. Okay. I'll I'll tell you right now. I've called 911 before. They said it was a nonemergency, and they were not coming to that property. And I own a lot of property in 76116, and I am flabbergasted by this. We back the blue. My husband and I donate to the police. I don't expect any special treatment than any of our our other citizens.
But for me to be put told they're gonna listen to me, and I get put on this rotating, line? Okay. So the first thing I would say is that if you feel threatened, call 911. And I'm telling you, we will show up. Okay? I know that you probably have had incidents where we may not have shown up. No. They have it. And I would love to sit down with you and get those incidents so I can research them myself and so we can get back to you to see why we did not show up. But I can tell you, I mean, we're here to protect you. We're here to protect everybody. And when you call, we will show up.
Now some of the other calls, because we're on a priority based list, depending on how the call is called in, the details that we get, we go to the the most urgent calls first. If you were being threatened, that's a fairly urgent call for us. We're gonna get there as quick as we can. But if something's being stolen and the suspects aren't there anymore, it may take us a little bit of time to get there because we are going to those urgent calls. So please don't think that we don't care because we do. And I'm more than happy to sit down with you and talk about all the incidents and at least research the incidents and get back with you to see what the delay was. Well, I appreciate that.
I've had these instances with, a a former constable who's actually a family friend who's deceased where the it's just it's been a nightmare. And I'm in this business. My family's been in this business for, god, I don't know, eighty years. And I know what I'm doing and I know the law, but it was really heartbreaking for me today that no one would help me. Oh, I'm sorry about that, honestly. Thank you. We did have a question that came in, through email. And it's, we noticed that Glenwood Park has 2,000,000 allocated for park enhancement.
Will this budget remain, and what part of the fiscal year will the funds be released? That 2,000,000 that they refer to is actually in the fiscal year '26 or the '26 bond program and not in the budget. Okay. So, yes, that's still in our proposal. Hey. Natalie Weimer. I live in Michael's District. Okay. So, a couple different questions. Seems like we were just asking all the questions. Homeless support in the city of Fort Worth. What is happening with that in terms of the new budget? It's to get your answer right there. Sure.
Hi. My name is Bethany Warner. I'm an intergovernmental relations manager at the city, and the homeless strategies unit is on my team. Come around where y'all can see me. Led by Tara Perez. So we have a couple different things happening in the f y twenty six budget. One thing to know is there's about 6,000,000 in general fund dollars that is within the Houma strategies unit. It funds a couple different programs. I won't try to get into all of them right now, but it's various things like rapid exit. It helps employed households get back on their feet when they fall into homelessness or
case management for permanent supportive housing. One of the bigger things in FY '26 that you may have heard about is our high impact program, which of which Camp Bowie area is one of the target areas. And it is a new program that started about seventeen months ago as a pilot and is going into the next year, and it is working at the intersection of severe mental illness and long term unsheltered homelessness. That very tricky, population that is in some of the hardest hit areas with homelessness that might have some folks that are gonna be really difficult to get them into
a situation where they're not on the street. So that's a program that's continuing into f y twenty six. And we've got several. I can point you in the direction on our website where it shows the different programs we have. And then I think it's always important to note is when we talk about what's in the city budget with homelessness, we also talk about that the city is a piece of the larger homelessness strategies for the city and region. We're part of a continuum of care with federal fund dollars that flow through partnership HOME, which is the lead agency for our COC. So we're not even the largest funder when it comes to homelessness response, but the
city is a key partner in a lot of things going on there. And then in the city, I'm talking speaking now about the homeless strategies programs, but of course, there's also our hope unit and the police department that works on response, our environmental services that works on, camping issues, parks department that looks at parks. So it's a lot of folks kinda coming together. It's a, as you know, really complex problem, and so we kinda come at it from a lot of different avenues. Is there a continuation of the or is there I also yeah. Sure.
That's okay. So, what is happening so you talked about Camp Bowie. What is also happening in the TCU area? Because that is also an area that's experiencing a lot of homelessness and crime. And I have a lot of rental properties in that area, and there is regular conversation about, concerns about homelessness in that area also. So the TCU area is not one of the the target areas for high impact, but that's not the only program out there. I think, you know, whenever it comes to specific areas that are having issues, we
go in and Tara can bring along Hope and PD and the players to to bring folks together, talk with their MPO about the issues they're having, and try to, see how it needs to be tackled, what are the issues, and what are the things that need to be happened? Do we need to be working with businesses? Do you need to be talking to the NPO more? Kind of so I think, you know, I would hope if you're not already maybe having the conversations with the NPO for that area about what you're seeing and continuing that. And then, if we need to get our homeless strategies unit involved to come in and think about some other strategies, does outreach need to be operating in the area?
Are there other homeless service organizations that need to be operating in the area? I think we try to look at it kind of case by case with the neighborhood is experiencing. You said I'm sorry. Do you want me to just take that one? She can make I'm gonna just make this easier. I know. Okay. So, also, I wanna say thank you to all the city people that are here. I appreciate you coming to listen and hear what we have to say. You said something about federal dollars coming through. What I know there were a lot of cuts on grants and programs and all that sort of stuff. Has there been a change in this year from the federal dollars that are flowing
through as far as helping with homelessness? Not at this time. The federal dollars largely flow through the continuum of care. So that's Partnership Home as the lead agency. We do have some that flow through the city. In neither case, there have been changes as of yet, but Partnership Home is really closely watching that to see if there are any changes in either the amount or the way they're administered or the way that they need to be, put out into the community. So they're closely watching to that, but no changes at this exact moment. Okay. Thank you. I have more questions. Parks and rec.
What's going on with putting trees? Because I agree with the park situation. Like, it's so hot here in Texas, and almost none of the parks have adequate shade and trees. And a lot of times, you have to go through the neighborhood, organizations to get trees, and they don't always approve them. Is what is going on with parks and trees and shade Sure. For our small children? Thank you. We actually do have a goal of a 30% tree canopy and we're currently at about 19% and so we do have an initiative to increase the number of trees
that we're putting out into the public spaces. We have a tree farm that's at the Rolling Hills, complex that we grow our own trees and we donate them to volunteers who are part of that program. But if you have areas that you'd like to see more trees, we would certainly love to see what we can do to add trees. Is 30% the tree canopy for just the parks or for all of the city? Public spaces. Public spaces. What what about the Trinity Trail? If there were trees along Trinity Trail, it would be beautiful. Hallelujah. On the levee? Yeah. Not on the levee, but along along the Trinity River.
Not the levee part, but, you know, on the, The other side that's not the levee side. You know, they're clear for, you know, the that whole area, there just aren't any trees. I agree. They're not enough. Oh. More comfortable if there were trees along the Trinity River. So what what is the reason for the 30% number? I understand we probably just need to have some open areas, but if for every park to have shade, what would that mean in terms of the percentage?
I can't tell you what that would look like to be covered completely, but when we did the urban forestry master plan, best practices studied other cities, what's a good number that we should be at in 30 is an aspirational goal for us, knowing that we're at 90% now. So we're increasing to get to that. We love shade. Shade helps parks. It helps decrease the temperature in the entire city. I mean, we're parks people. We love trees. But not everything can have a tree. We have open play areas and things that, you know, can't be fully treed. But, yes, we are adding trees as quickly as we can.
It's a value for us. When is the 30% goal set to be hit? What is the expectation? I don't have an answer. I'll stop and hit for that, but I'll get back to you with it. Awesome. Okay. Another question. Oh. Yeah. So the Tarrant Regional Water District controls the Trinity Trail system. And so, the parks department, you might wanna talk about the trees that you added along Forest Park because that was a partnership where the water district has to approve tree plantings there. Yeah. We did add some on the east side of the river between the river and
the water plant there, and it was a partnership with TRWD, with the corps of engineers, with the water department. It's quite a bit, and I think we added 30 trees. But so there are some being added, and we obviously look at key areas that we should add those to get to the 30% goal. So the 30% wouldn't include the the Trinity Trail. It's just city owned parks. It's it's public spaces within the city. Yeah. Okay. So it does include the trail even though you are not in charge of the trail. Is that what I'm hearing?
In general, if we take the entire square area of the city, 30% of that, we want to be covered by trees. I don't know if it's as specific as delineating all of those areas, but in general, yes. Okay. Because my next question was gonna be what was the Trinity Water District's goal for tree coverage on the Trinity Trail, but you're saying this is all within the same? Yeah. I don't know if they have a specific goal. They don't do trees. Yeah. If if you're interested, the Urban Forest Master Plan is online, and so you can I see? But I'll I'll get back to you. Okay. I'll get back to you on the date. Okay. Awesome. Can you explain how CCPD funding works?
I don't remember. So the CCPD funding is a half cent sales tax that the voters approved originally in 1996, I believe. Is that right? '97? No. It was actually '95. Yeah. '95. That was approved in 1995. It's been approved by the voters of Fort Worth, again, multiple times. It was every five years, and the last time it was for ten years. And those funds go toward, to be used by the police department primarily, and it's for crime prevention and for, police activity.
So, all our cadet classes, for instance, so when we're hiring new police officers, get paid out of the CCPD. All of the fleet, new cars as cars wear out, get paid by CCPD. We have a program that we provide funding to some nonprofits that do crime prevention activities that they get paid out of CCPD. So it's an annual budget, just like the rest of the budget that gets brought forward. The board is the city council, so the CCPD board. They review the budget, request as they go through, and it just it's basically a
half cent sales tax. But the rest of the police is funded through a different portion? The rest of the police department, the base police department is funded out of the general fund through property and sales tax and like the rest of the general fund, like fire, like most of the t p transportation public works, like the parks department operations, those kind of things. Okay. Okay. Thank you all for being patient. Why are community partnerships going down? I mean, I'm just kinda curious. Is it going down or going up? Maybe I bet I read it wrong. It it That was reduced from a million a year to half a million a
year. That is a a funding source where if a partner in the community typically, we based it on what what the need was on previous years. So I'll give you an example. Casa Manana. They wanna do some improvements at Casa Manana. That's a city owned facility. They raise they come to us and they raise a $100,000, and and we take it to the city council. And then we out of that fund, we match them a $100,000 so they can do their infrastructure improvements. So it's really, really specific for partnership, opportunities that are typically kinda city based facilities
or city type, you know you match funds. Yeah. Got it. One more question. What is the so the property tax rate is decreasing Correct. By a quarter of a cent? Quarter of a cent. Per per on average. Yes. So is that just the residential rate, or is that a commercial rate, or how does that work? Same rate for everybody. It's a Businesses, residences are all getting $36 was the average For a homeowner. Yeah. Home value. That's what that was. What does that translate into into dollars for the entire budget?
About 3.4? Yeah. Penny is 11. So about 3,400,000.0. So the the total amount that we're gonna take in, if all things if the values of homes didn't change, is 3 point something million less. If we left the tax rate, without changing it, we would collect $3,400,000 more. Yes. Yes. So you're gonna take in 3,400,000.0 yes. You would collect 3,400,000.0 more. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Mhmm. Thank you all again for being here.
Yes, sir. The, you mentioned earlier about Hello? You mentioned earlier about your current budget for roads is 58,000,000 or 68,000,000. I might have assured you. Between 55 and 60,000,000. I don't remember the exact number. But you need a 100,000,000. Right. So there's gonna be a shortfall this year. There's been a yes. There's been a shortfall every year. So we're trying to Oh, there has been. We're trying to we're trying to build it up to get When do we well, well, that's my question. Is when are these two lines gonna cross? Do we have an expectation on that? So we have a five year program to try to get close, if and it
was based on continuing the continued growth of the city and new values. Because we have a current currently, we have a a cap on property values of existing properties of 3.5%. So we can't collect more than 3.5% in new revenues from existing property. So the growth has to come from new new values altogether. And so in order to be able to do that. So, the only other way to do that is if we and we're not gonna do that. That's why you call it pay go. You pay as you go is to issue debt.
We're not gonna do that for maintenance. So it's a over a period of that, we owe we added 4,000,000, 4,600,000.0 this year. The the transportation public works department came in asking for, like, 10.5 to try to move it along, but that would be another 6,000,000 that we'd have to take from somewhere else to be able to put it there. And so we try to balance where the dollars are going overall to keep the budget moving forward. Okay. So my smart ass, smart aleck crack a while ago about, in this century, it's still a pretty good estimate.
In this century? Well, it I think it's all it's it's all gonna be based on how our values go forward and the ability to put more dollars into that PayGo side. We're also looking at, so like Arlington, Austin, I think Plano, they have a a street maintenance fee. And so we're looking at that that potentially would would dedicate dollars, like a fixed dollars to that, where you could collect somewhere between 20 and 30,000,000. That would help with the big bump.
But that that'll be in the future. City council would have to approve it and go through that whole process. Is there a city component to the gas tax at the pump? No. No gas tax and no vehicles either. Alright. Any other questions? Yes, sir. I would our country's gonna be 250 years old, and I think that most of y'all people are concerned about your country because you're here. And I would suggest get yourself educated on the founding documents. Start reading the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and start
reading your state constitution. Thank you. Michael, you wanna close this out? All good. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you for your time coming out. Thank you. Thank you.