Fort Worth City Council Budget Work Session and CCPD Board Meeting - August 18, 2026
Fort Worth City Council Budget Work Session and CCPD Board Meeting - August 18, 2026
The City Council held a budget work session to discuss the proposed FY2027 budget, focusing on vacancy eliminations, fee adjustments, and service impacts. The meeting was followed by the Fort Worth Crime Control and Prevention District (CCPD) Board of Directors meeting, which approved funding requests, budget amendments, and heard a presentation on the FY2027 CCPD budget. Two public speakers requested a dedicated discussion on the use of Flock automated license plate readers.
Consent Calendar
- Approval of CCPD meeting minutes from May 19, 2026.
- Acceptance of written reports: FY26 second quarter performance report and Partners with a Shared Mission quarterly update.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Ryan Almousoui (District 7 resident) requested a dedicated public discussion on Fort Worth's use of Flock Safety automated license plate readers before committing additional funds, citing concerns about cost, measurable results, and oversight.
- Nancy Cosio (District 7 resident) echoed the request, emphasizing the need for clear rules on data access, auditing, and accountability, given incidents of misuse elsewhere in Texas.
Discussion Items
City Council Budget Work Session
- Vacancy Eliminations and Freezes: Proposals to continue or eliminate 45 positions in Parks and Recreation, including 20 community center employees. Councilmember Beck expressed concern about service level impacts on library and parks, and requested a breakpoint analysis to determine how many positions could be absorbed without hour reductions. Councilmember Flores asked for remaining employee counts by category for context. Councilmember Hill questioned the veterinarian position (one FTE, high volume spay/neuter) and was told the city relies on contract vets and partnerships (Operation Kindness, TCAP).
- Fee Adjustments: Staff presented the full fee schedule (176 pages). Councilmember Beck requested a simplified summary of fees directly impacting residents. Brady Kirk (Assistant Director, Fort Worth Lab) noted that the average homeowner faces a $7 total increase from all fee adjustments. Staff agreed to provide a slide summarizing resident and development fees by Friday.
- Code Compliance Budget Reductions: Discussion on discontinuing the Alliance PetSmart partnership. Brian Dockerty (Code Compliance Director) estimated the live release rate would drop 6–8% (from over 90% for the first time in five years), affecting approximately 1,000–1,200 additional animals and associated grants for microchipping and vaccinations. Councilmembers Beck and Hill called the cut a "non-starter" and stated the $1.1 million cost (approximately 4/100 of a penny on the tax rate) should be added back.
- Mowing Cycles for Alleys: Proposal to reduce unimproved alley mowing from four to two times per year, saving $648,000. Councilmembers Beck, Peoples, and Nettles cited safety concerns and urged a compromise of three cycles (saving $324,000). Staff will bring numbers for three cycles. A pilot program for "adopt-an-alley" was suggested and will be explored.
- Fire Hope Team: Plan to eliminate the Fire Hope team and replace it with the Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) group (11 FTEs) focusing on the Lancaster corridor (0.21 sq mi, 700 EMS calls/month, 23 ambulance calls/day). Savings of $632,000 in overtime. Councilmember Hill requested keeping the lieutenant for institutional knowledge; Chief Horton assured the lieutenant would remain involved.
- Pay-Go Matrix: Reduction in the Neighborhood Improvement Program from $4M to $1M in the first year to align with slow initial spending, then increase to $3M in year two. Councilmember Beck expressed concern about using interest earnings for risk funds rather than as part of the regular budgeting process. Staff noted that not budgeting interest earnings (which fluctuate) is a best practice recognized by rating agencies.
- Other Items: Councilmember Hill proposed reducing conference budgets from $140,000 (across 10 offices) to $50,000 and offered to forgo her $14,000 allocation. Councilmember Martinez suggested reallocating unspent Neighborhood Improvement Program funds to cover PetSmart Alliance and alley mowing. Councilmember Nettles requested a future agenda item to revert the new IR system to the previous format.
CCPD Board Meeting
- Emerging Partners Program Funding Requests: Approved $200,000 in grants: $50,000 development grant to Maroon 9 for arts-based youth violence prevention, and $150,000 program grant to Opening Doors for Women in Need for re-entry and workforce development services.
- FY26 Budget Amendments: Approved $2.643 million for patrol support overtime (to cover general fund overtime due to higher CCPD vacancy rates) and an unspecified amount for special events overtime (FIFA) to await federal reimbursements.
- CCPD FY27 Budget Overview: Chief and Keith Morris presented a $146.7 million budget, a 4.82% increase over FY26. Key changes: eight new positions (bike patrol, SROs, traffic control technicians), conversion of 30 patrol positions to corporals, $8 million reduction in high-mileage vehicle replacement (redirected $4 million to radio replacement), and a freeze on Partners with a Shared Mission program funding at FY26 levels. The public hearing on the CCPD budget was continued to August 21, 2026.
Key Outcomes
- City Council: Directed staff to provide by Friday:
- Cost of adding back PetSmart Alliance funding and three alley mowing cycles, with tax rate impact.
- Breakpoint analysis for parks and library positions to avoid service reductions.
- Summary of resident-impacting fee increases and overall development fees.
- CCPD Board:
- Approved meeting minutes, written reports, emerging partners grants ($200,000), and budget amendments ($2.643 million + special events).
- Continued the CCPD FY27 budget public hearing to August 21, 2026.
- Future Agenda Items:
- A dedicated discussion on Flock cameras and automated license plate readers (requested by two public speakers, supported by multiple council members) – to be brought to both a City Council work session and a future CCPD meeting.
- An in-depth review of CCPD budget savings and potential transfers to the general fund (requested by Councilmember Flores).
- A discussion on reverting the IR system to its previous format (requested by Councilmember Nettles).
Meeting Transcript
Yeah, I'll be able to take my internet list. I feel like we have to play very important. Okay, good afternoon, council. I will call our budget work session to order. I believe that council member Jameson is also online. And I'll turn it immediately over to C Manager Troppa. Good afternoon. Uh thank you for being here at our first uh work session for the budget after the delivery of the proposed budget last week. We sent we worked hard over the last week or so to put together the budget responses from questions that came from the city council. Those were sent out yesterday. I don't know if you'd like to treat them like we do in formal reports and go through them and have council ask questions. Um we could do that. And so I'll go ahead and start with the first one, which is the vacancy eliminations and freezes of positions that are being recommended. And Christiane Simmons is here to ask answer most of the questions. We get to the details, we can have others uh come forward. Questions from Council More Beck? Sure. Um so I I appreciate this list. I am incredibly concerned about our parks and recreation department because it does seem like the lion's share of these positions are coming from them. Um I appreciate um the final piece of this IR budget response that talked about um what these service levels impacts are and so I'd be um interested to know in what we're looking at for facility hour reductions from both our parks and rec and our library departments. Yeah, so I know we have staff here that can probably help with that. I'll say as Dave maybe makes his way up to the microphone. Sorry, Dave. Um, that the departments got these lists, you know, a week or two ago too with the recommended budget. And I know in parks in particular, he asked, can we go ahead and share, you know, this list so that we can begin to look at the cumulative impacts of all these positions? So I know they maybe have just begun that work, but may have some preliminary thoughts to share. Good afternoon. I'll do the best to answer that question. And as she referenced, we have seen the list for a couple of weeks where we started put together the impacts, but really didn't know the cumulative impact, so we're still working to figure out. I think we have almost 20 community center employees, but really thinking big picture system-wide what that might be. We don't have answers yet, but we certainly will bring that back. I will also remind you or and let you know that we have uh informal report coming up in the next few weeks to talk a little bit more about the community center master plan study that we're implementing that will also have recommendations on some of that. So we're we're we don't know the direct impacts yet. We know they there will be uh some hour closures and obviously do our best to look at the data to figure out participation rates and make you know wise decisions on that, but at this point we don't have specific impacts. Okay, what I would like to see is as you go through that process. Um if you could give us a you know, right now, I think it was like 30. Was it how many employees from parks? 45. 45. Um what at what point do we not experience a reduction in hours, right? So of those 45 employees, what's what's the break point if we keep seven of the community center aids or you know, uh at what point do we not have to cut services? How many could we absorb and not have that direct impact? Correct. We can put that together. Yes, yeah, that would be helpful. Thank you. And the same for library as well, because it talks about a reduction in library staff. And then I just also want to um point out that uh code compliance and TPW are two departments that deal with safety, and so um code was something on our survey that we saw people um say that was important to them over and over again. And so I want to make sure that the level of service at code is not being impacted. And then um I recently had in district nine uh two different instances where um a because of we were short we're short staffed and TPW inspectors, particularly for those third party um permits for you know people working in our right-of-way.
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