On Monday, April 13, 2026, the City of Fort Worth held a town hall meeting at the Diamond Hill Jarvis Community Center to present and answer questions about the proposed 2026 bond program and charter amendments. Mayor Pro Tem Carlos Flores (District 2) opened the meeting, emphasizing the city's fiscal responsibility and the bond's role in funding capital projects. The meeting included a pre-recorded video overview, presentations by April Rose Escamilla (registered civil engineer) and Assistant City Attorney Gavin Midgley, a question-and-answer session, and opportunities for one-on-one discussions with subject-matter experts.
Good evening, everybody. Let's all settle in and we'll get started. First, thank you all for being here this evening to learn about the 2026 bond program. I'm Carlos Flores. I'm the District 2 City Council member and also Mayor Pro Tem, City of Fort Worth. So I welcome you along with the rest of staff circling the room. We're here to answer your questions about the bond. Every four years we have a bond program. And this is very noteworthy because it's an indicator that the city government is working, that we are very responsible with your tax dollars, and we have the capacity to have these bond programs every four years. Why have a bond program? Very good question. Essentially, a bond program enables us to go further with our project goals. That is, capital projects need money to be funded to become reality, whether it be a facilities project, a street project, a park project. We need those capital dollars. And the bond program helps us get further along. This time around, the bond program is 840 million, maybe slightly north of that figure. So that's a pretty hefty amount, it sounds. But believe me, you when you start allocating that amount to different needs, it goes quickly. Approximately 60%, for instance, goes to streets and mobility infrastructure needs, right? But we're also very cognizant that there are other needs that the city, you know, has and that you all are interested in seeing some work being done. And some of those needs, and I'll list them in no particular order, you know, come with parks and open spaces, right? The amenities that come with those parks, maintenance thereof of those parks. Uh as a city develops, you know, we're very careful about maintaining our open spaces. Public libraries, you know, improvement of the public libraries and their facilities. It's very important to us because even over time, you might think if you haven't visited your library, you know, recently, visit it because it is really markedly changed. We've adapted to you know the current times, and the library serves more people, has better collections, and you'll be really surprised on how it's adapted to the times. Okay, following that, what else do we have? Affordable housing. That's something that we keep hearing about, right? As uh the city grows, the cost of living grows. We try to manage that by providing affordable housing in certain you know, AMI ranges. The city council talked about that recently. Originally, we allocated five million dollars. We went back and decided we wanted to allocate more. So in discussions with the city manager, he made that happen. Change the allocations a little bit so now it's 10 million dollars for affordable housing. And I think that's very important. And then we also have our public safety needs, you know, police and fire, including our communications. As you've probably heard, you know, we transitioned from a you know privatized ambulance service to now fire-based ambulance service. We're also improving our call centers, our dispatch 911. We're co-locating those, and we're gonna continue to do that to be more responsive, you know, to your needs. And so with these things, you know, we hope to bring to bear more dollars to make these improvements a reality. So I'll stop right there, and I think on display, you will see eventually A through F as far as propositions are concerned. And those particular propositions, you know, animal shelter also being one. Uh, we're replacing Chuck Silcox, you know, that uh old facility has uh, you know, the needs have outgrown it. So we need to replace that. We have a lot of uh furry friends that are in need, and we're gonna try to grow with that need. But when you see the screen here, we'll have a I think I believe a short presentation, right? Video presentation that'll explain it further. And if you haven't taken the opportunity to look around the room, you know, depending on what range in the alphabet you have from A through F, you can go to those specific tables and they will give you further information regarding any particular proposition or propositions that you might have further questions about.