Fort Worth residents will have fewer opportunities to address their elected representatives at City Hall next year.<\/p>\n
The number of meetings dedicated to allowing residents to air concerns in front of City Council members will shrink from the 15-meeting schedule this year to 10 in 2026. Residents will have one chance per month, excluding July and November, to publicly address them on any topic.<\/p>\n
Council members approved the change with a 7-4 vote as they adopted their 2026 meeting schedule Sept. 30. Council members Elizabeth Beck, Mia Hall, Chris Nettles and Deborah Peoples opposed the change, arguing that it\u2019s important to hear constituents\u2019 concerns publicly.<\/p>\n
Those in favor of the change stressed residents still have the opportunity to address them during those designated meetings as well as during committee meetings or privately one-on-one.<\/p>\n
The vote came after six speakers urged council members to increase, not decrease, chances for residents to address City Council. No one spoke in favor of the reduction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere continues to be this restriction of the people\u2019s voices, and this can not be accepted,\u201d Fort Worth resident Alexander Montalvo told council members before challenging them to double such speaking opportunities. He also asked that they add public comments to all regular council meetings.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth resident Mendi Tackett described the ability to address elected officials as the \u201cfoundation of representative government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic comment is where accountability happens,\u201d Tackett said before the vote. \u201cIt\u2019s where citizens can bring forward concerns that may not fit neatly into an agenda item but still matter deeply to their neighborhoods, their families and their livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents may address council members during regular meetings, but their comments must remain focused on a specific agenda item that they signed up to speak about. During public comment meetings, speakers can talk about any topic.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth City Council meetings in 2026<\/b><\/p>\n
Under the adopted schedule, council members will meet on Tuesdays as follows:<\/p>\n
The new schedule gives council members one Tuesday per month with no meetings.<\/p>\n
During debate, Nettles proposed adding public comment opportunities to the end of the council\u2019s morning meetings. His amendment was voted down by the same council members who approved the change.<\/p>\n
Council member Michael Crain said his constituents have easy access to him and his staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there are true issues that need to be resolved and you need to reach us, (we\u2019re) very accessible, all of us are,\u201d Crain said. \u201cSo I see that the time that we spend here in public comment means we don\u2019t have a Tuesday night out where we can go to a neighborhood meeting, we can go meet with people, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council member Charlie Lauersdorf said he would have supported Nettles\u2019 amendment if he witnessed more residents attend meetings, adding that the majority of frequent attendees are journalists and city staff. Like Crain, he said he\u2019s happy to meet one-on-one with residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe issue with the public comment is you don\u2019t really get that back-and-forth dialogue where you can ask questions, get answers, bring some subject matter experts to the table and actually solve the problems,\u201d Lauersdorf said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of the same song and dance, which I\u2019m happy to listen to, but I never really hear a lot of solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hall said public comment is \u201cpart of the Democratic process.\u201d She and Nettles argued that although residents can have private meetings with them, it\u2019s beneficial to the entire council to hear the concerns of other districts\u2019 constituents in a public forum.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to hear from other districts in a public setting like this so that I can know how that individual feels,\u201d Nettles said. \u201cYou\u2019ll see votes tonight where people will vote against and for projects that I have in my district \u2014 it\u2019s because of their own individual interests or they heard from their constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hall said limiting public comment opportunities to one Tuesday per month forces residents to choose between spaces where they want to have a voice because Tarrant County Commissioners Court and Fort Worth ISD board members also meet on Tuesdays.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely believe that we need to give people the options and the availability and the flexibility to bring forth their concerns,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n
During the Tuesday meeting, Mayor Mattie Parker clapped back at community activist<\/a> Patrice Jones, who told the council that limiting public comments could force her and others to seek out alternatives to air concerns to council members.<\/p>\n \u201cPatrice, I still have your casket,\u201d Parker called out from the dais as Jones took her seat in the audience. The mayor otherwise didn\u2019t comment on the meeting schedule change.<\/p>\n Several Fort Worth advocacy groups have since demanded the mayor apologize<\/a> to Jones.<\/p>\n Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at\u00a0cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Worth residents will have fewer opportunities to address their elected representatives at City Hall next year. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":277344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-277343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fortworth","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115316403978631274","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}