Fort Worth officials want to spend about $79 million in taxpayer dollars next year to maintain and develop the city’s park system.
The dollars would be used to fund Fort Worth’s park and recreation department, which oversees about 13,500 acres of land across more than 300 city-owned parks.
The funding, yet to be finalized, would be carved out of the city’s roughly $3 billion budget for the fiscal year 2026, which starts Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30, 2026. The 2026 funding would be an increase of about 3.7% over the department’s 2025 funds, according to the city’s budget proposal.
Park department dollars are allocated from the budget’s general fund of $1.11 billion, which is used to fund most public-facing city services. Other departments that receive dollars from the general fund are police and fire, as well as neighborhood services.
Park staff manage city parks, including tree planting and maintenance, grass and weed mowing, litter removal and minor repairs. They also oversee park facility reservations, manage operational contracts for services such as adopt-a-park programs and grounds maintenance, and coordinate volunteer activities.
City Manager Jay Chapa and FWLab staff lead the budget’s development and present a recommendation for how to spend taxpayer dollars to City Council members, who get the final say on the budget.
Council members are scheduled to adopt the city budget and tax rate Sept. 16. Under the current recommendation, the average Fort Worth homeowner can expect a lower tax rate but higher service fees that would ultimately result in an increase of about $20 on their annual tax bill.
The majority of the $79 million recommended for the park department, about $42 million would cover general operations and maintenance.
Less than a third of the total, almost $32 million, would cover salaries and benefits for park employees. Those dollars include a $320,000 increase from 2025’s budget to account for the city increasing its minimum wage to $18 per hour, a change that took effect in February.
Other funding changes include a $175,000 increase for open space initiatives. That funding would support Mayor Mattie Parker’s Good Natured initiative, launched in 2023 with the goal of preserving 10,000 acres of open space across the city by 2028. As of May, the city had saved a little more than 1,000 acres from development through the initiative.
Parker’s initiative helped Fort Worth’s park system improve in national rankings this year. The environment-focused nonprofit Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore Index survey, which annually ranks parks across the country’s 100 most populated cities, scored Fort Worth as having the 72nd best city park system. That was a jump of 19 spots from its 2024 ranking at 91st place.
Fort Worth’s park ranking also benefited from a revised master park plan and increased funding, the Trust for Public Land’s Texas director said in May. Over the past four years, Fort Worth has increased spending on parks by more than 50%.
Throughout the end of August and early September, city officials hosted a series of town hall meetings to gather resident input on how to budget city dollars next year. Two more meetings, on Sept. 11 at the Northside Community Center and Sept. 15 at the William M. McDonald YMCA, are scheduled before the council adopts the budget.
Residents may also weigh in through an online survey.
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org.
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