The Fort Worth City Council held a work session on March 3, 2026, beginning at 2:01 p.m. and adjourning at 3:03 p.m. Mayor Pro Tem Carlos Flores presided. Mayor Mattie Parker, Council Member Macy Hill (District 7), and Council Member Alan Blaylock (District 10) were absent. The meeting covered informal reports, the annual financial report, a proposed economic development agreement, and updates on the Main Street America pilot program. Council members also requested several future reports.
Good afternoon, everybody. We have a quorum now, and I called to order the March 3rd City Council work session. Now turn it over to Jay Choppin. Jay, let's hear your report, sir. Good afternoon. Uh sorry we were not outside, and it's beautiful weather out there. Uh under upcoming and recent events, I wanted to remind everyone of the twenty twenty-five mayor's community engagement workshops and neighborhood awards luncheon this Saturday from uh at Doxology Church. So if you don't have it on your calendars, you might want to add that. So we'll move on to informal reports. The first one is twenty-six-three five Choctaw Code Talkers Historical Marker at Veterans Memorial Park. Joel McKnight with Park and Rec is here to answer any questions. Are there any questions on this uh informal report? None. The next Zero Zero Three Six Citations issued in the East Lancaster corridor related to the new public safety initiative. Robert Stewart, police commanders here. Answer any questions. Go ahead, Chris. Well, um, come on, if you can just give um an overview of the IR. I know we talked yesterday, and I have one or two questions I'll put on the record. Yeah. Um, so we began an initiative in the corridor at uh around January twenty-third. It's been going on today. So we had seen an uptick in violent crime over the over the fall. So we were tracking these numbers. We saw that we needed to address the violent crime. So we began uh with an SOF detail. We also incorporated the Hope Unit Environmental Services and Patrol all working together to address some of the issues of uh illegal camping, blocking the roadway, blocking the sidewalks, trying to get traffic offenses for people that are possibly bringing drugs into the area. So it's been a coordinated effort. We the IR basically had all the citations that were written to that date of the request. It also had it separated the citations that were issued during the time of the cold weather freeze. Now on the IR, it says the there was 12 citations issued during that time frame of January 23rd to January 27th. That was a you know the cold weather event was Friday, Saturday, Sunday really bad, started getting a little better on Monday and Tuesday. One citation was written on Monday, and all the rest of the citations were written on Tuesday. So during that time frame where we were dealing with that catastrophe, we were merely driving people to shelters, giving out bus passes, making sure that everybody was safe. I have a lot more I could go over with the with the initiative. If you have any questions specifically, well, as it relates to the illegal camping, because I think that was kind of a lot of the issues. Which one articulates that on this violent crime, or is it not listed here? So a lot of the violent crime what we've noticed, so in just looking at it and looking at the violent crime that we're seeing, a lot of it is unhoused person on unhoused person. So and we look at kind of what's happening. So a lot of it's disputes over property. So this person, whether they stole the property or they believe they stole the property, turns into an assault, turns into an aggravated assault, somebody gets hit with something, stabbed or something. So we are starting to see a lot of these offenses. Well, we go in there to go try to look at things. Well, there's camps all over the place, big large tents. We can't really see what's going on in the tents, and they're obstructing the passageways for anybody going through there. So we're forcing all the people that work there and all the people go into the resources to walk in the middle of the roadway, which is also a safety issue. So we begin with asking people that's our obvious right in front of us, illegal illegal uh action that's we're observing, is that they're illegally camping. So we go over there and we've had major success with people just cooperating with us. Hey, you can't camp here, it's against city ordinance, you need to pick up your camp and go. And as you can see on the uh, well, in our broader presentation, there's something like 734 warnings we've given out in comparison to 74 citations over the total time.