Fort Worth Mayoral Candidate Questionnaires

No, I am ambivalent to this idea. The thing that is more important to me is the result, and I don’t see that the members of such a commission would be any more accountable than the City Council members and their staff currently empowered to draw the district boundaries. Redistricting is supposed to be about making sure each district has the same number of residents and not about gerrymandering to ensure each district has a particular demographic make-up.

I support placing that power in the hands of an independent redistricting citizen committee for the purposes of equity and transparency. We should not settle for a situation where our politicians can choose their voters. Our voters should choose the politicians. That’s the best way we can elect city leaders who can be the most qualified to represent all our diversity.

I absolutely support an independent redistricting commission, who would be responsible for drawing the lines to include two NEW districts. If you’ve been watching the last few Council Meetings, you will have noticed I am often the sole vote to support this effort. We must move away from the political influence of sitting council members and toward a more focused effort on improving representation of our communities of Color. I believe that voters should select their elected officials, not the other way around. District lines should be drawn solely on the basis of what is best and most equitable for the residents.

The City Council’s role in increasing available housing should confine itself to removing restrictions against using property in the city for housing, not acting as a financier to developers. I would allow rather than hinder growth, but I would not want to heavily subsidize that building at taxpayer expense.

One of my top priorities is making Fort Worth an attractive place to work, live, and start a family. Changes to zoning and land-use policies are often charged debates, but I want to call people to their better angels and focus on the long-term goals of maximizing the benefits of our historic growth instead of doing nothing and having it become a great burden. We must take a balanced approach to zoning solutions so we’re not over-reliant on one form of housing or another.We can avoid this worst-case scenario by allowing for more flexible zoning and land-use policies. 

Mayoral and City Council Questionnaire.docx

Although we still need a basic understanding of supply and demand and how it affects market rates, there must be additional communication in communities who don’t understand the value of mixed-income housing options. Educating neighborhoods about what it means for them, as a neighborhood, when there’s a healthy balance of available workforce housing, affordable housing and market-rate housing.

I do want to acknowledge, that when developers ask to change zoning from commercial to multi-family, we should be concerned about losing the commercial tax base. But there must be a balance, which due to my background and experience in City planning, I am able to look at holistically at the cituation. I do support ensuring that multi-family development is located in proximity to City services, such as transit.

We find that some residents have a knee-jerk reaction – the “not in my backyard” folks – but their opposition is often mitigated by open, honest conversations about the opportunities these developments bring. Public conversation and education are key here. As a Council Member, these conversations have been a large part of my service, and as Mayor, I will continue to advocate for public education on the benefits of the “housing first” model.

I would encourage the use of smaller, less expensive, and more fuel efficient buses and trains moving forward. I also find that the train and bus station lots have inconvenient barriers to entry and exit with one-way flow, and I would want to connect the lots to the roads in more accessible fashion.

I am focused on promoting smart infrastructure for our city. We’ve seen in Dallas and many other areas how adding lane after lane and only focusing on automotive transit causes congestion, frustration, and pollution. I will focus on a balanced approach to infrastructure investments including light rail to make it easier and more efficient to travel around all parts of Fort Worth. At the end of the day, dollars invested in public infrastructure is one of the best ways to see a high return on investment. Right now, Fort Worth needs to invest more in public transit, which will directly benefit residents, save money on gas that would be spent in traffic, and make Fort Worth a more attractive place to live and work.

Creating, supporting, and improving a multimodal transportation system would be a top priority for me as Mayor of Fort Worth, as I am the only mayoral candidate to receive a “Five Star” rating from the Tarrant Transit Alliance (TTA). My support would include multiple actions aligned with the mission of TTA, including educating, empowering and mobilizing our community to promote transit. One top action would be to ensure we are prepared to take advantage of the current Federal administration’s stated policy to fund infrastructure projects, including mass transit. We can’t let another opportunity to provide improved transit options slip through our fingers.

The inadequate funding for public transit in Fort Worth has been identified by numerous sources, in addition to the United Way of Tarrant County. I agree that funding for transit is not sufficient. Funding for transit would be a top priority for my administration when I am Mayor. I have a record of suggesting creative funding options, fighting for increased funding in the City’s budget, and increasing transit projects supported by the Regional Transportation Council (RTC). Others approaches I would support are collaborating with additional regional transit agencies, and determining which funding initiatives have been successful in other cities which we could pursue here.

In addition to my role in the creation of the TTA, I advocate for safe streets legislation locally, as well as at the state and federal level. I work alongside Trinity Metro and currently serve on the RTC as the Secretary – in line to be the Vice-Chair and the Chair of that body. My expertise, coupled with my past and current commitment to future service, makes me the most transit-supportive candidate for Mayor.

No, because I’m my study of the benefit of athletics programs to cities, I find that hosting marathons has a higher “bang for the buck” return on investment.

After 34 years as an executive in the business world, I’ve seen how local governments do a disservice to their taxpayers and give away the store to teams not looking to pay their fair share. In all dealings with abatements and job creator attraction, I will use my extensive business experience to ensure our agreements are beneficial to our residents and our economy. Pledging to bring a sports team to Fort Worth in X number of years puts our city in a weak negotiating position. 

I will forever be a champion for the City of Fort Worth, and would be happy to consider how adding another sports team would affect our City, particularly as it relates to economic development. However, I would say there would have to be some very compelling evidence to support adding a team to the already existing roster of sports teams who are already present in the Metroplex. Additionally, I will continue to support our newest team additions: the Fort Worth Vaqueros and the Panther City Lacrosse Club.

I have been a substitute teacher for Crowley ISD, Fort Worth ISD, and a few of the local charter schools. I have applied and interviewed for multiple full-time teaching positions that all pay better than being Mayor.

Our mayor needs to be an active partner with our school districts to ensure our students have everything they need to be successful—from access to nutritious food to classes that provide skills that Fort Worth’s employers are seeking. We have seen an inactive approach to partnership between our cities and our school districts, and I plan to reverse course. Our PTA groups and education leaders have so many great ideas that could be benefitted from attention and resources from the city, and I intend to be a force multiplier to help make those ideas a reality.

In my current role as the District 9 Council Member, it’s been important to me to build relationships and connect with my colleagues in ISD leadership, particularly those serving on the Board of Trustees for FWISD. During my service on Council, we added the position of Educational Strategies Manager in the City Manager’s office to liaise between the City and ISD’s to provide services to support the goals of each district. City services, i.e. after-school programs, camps, and community center programs, should be additive to achieving student learning outcomes.
Communication and relationship building with ALL the ISD’s that touch Fort Worth will be a priority for me as Mayor, as it is important to me to support those in leadership who are responsible for the academic success of our youngest residents. Great schools mean great neighborhoods, and great neighborhoods make a world-class city where we hope our children will graduate from, attend college or trade school within, and stay/return to live and work.

Something that the pandemic has reinforced is the need for the City to work more closely with the ISD’s to develop and maintain more creative, sustainable solutions to feed our youngest residents. This is an issue that has been amplified as we’ve seen families with school-aged children forced to adapt to challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic (particularly those with free/reduced school lunches where they could be getting up to three meals a day at their schools).

Perhaps the most successful approach to making sure these families are fed, is not to require them to go somewhere to get their meals, but to bring the meals to them. We must ask ourselves, where are people going about their daily lives? How can we make the process WORK for them by removing barriers to access. For example, FWISD made a tremendous effort to make sure students were receiving meals by packing multiple days’ worth of breakfast and lunch and offering them to ALL their students during those weeks when school was totally virtual. FWISD also used their own food trucks for pop-up pick-up locations in certain neighborhoods. There must be more collaboration on behalf of the City, the school districts, and those non-profits who are already doing the work in neighborhoods.

Low to moderate income residents *like myself* have to shop around for the best deal we can find in terms of distance for commute, amenities, and neighborhood location with respect to shopping centers and schools. We struggle to obtain better housing, employment, and personal transportation to improve our quality of life. What Options are we offering? Options available include renting apartments in large complexes, renting rooms in houses or multiplex buildings from the owner as a landlord, leasing in an extended stay motel, sharing expenses with friends or family members, buying homes subject to bank or tax lien foreclosure, and buying land outside the city limits to put a mobile or modular home (since they are currently banned on any property in the city less than four acres that hasn’t been zoned as a trailer park). Realtors work with people with low incomes as fiduciaries to identify other workable options, and there are also sites such as Craigslist and airbnb that offer housing options I have previously used.

Yes there is a building boom here in Fort Worth for middle-class residents, and the growth of single-family housing prices has exceeded pay increases. Leaning on three decades as a senior executive in the business world, I will look to proven tools for economic growth: targeted business incentives, investments in previously ignored communities, and economic relief based on reality instead of insider connections. We need our housing efforts to always need to be centered around a balanced approach to property values. 

As a retiree, I don’t want to be priced out of my home, and I can personally relate to that very real concern with many of our seniors. Low-income residents areas face a distinct challenge as well. My plans to grow our tax base by putting Fort Worth on the map for tourism and relocation for new job creators will relieve the undue burden on homeowners to provide the lion’s share of our tax base. By clarifying priority areas for new businesses and working with other localities to avoid abatement bidding wars, we can raise the level of economic prosperity in all our city’s neighborhoods and ensure their employees can not only stay in their homes but become thriving contributors to their communities.

I’ve had lots of experience with this issue in my service as the District 9 Council Member in the urban core. We’ve brought multiple developments to the Near Southside, and it’s due in large part because the community has been included in the conversations with developers, and the developers LISTENED to the needs of the community. I will continue to advocate for incentivizing small, local, community-minded developers who wish to do infill projects and/or utilize adaptive reuse strategies. This includes encouraging housing development that may not be traditionally how we’ve thought about affordable housing, such as work/live units for creatives, for example.

Additionally, we must be more intentional about attaching minimum wage requirements to these development incentives. For example, we already require a specific number of local jobs to be able to take advantage of certain incentives for development. As Mayor, not only would I provide the platform for these conversations, but I would lead the charge on the policy changes necessary to support livable wages, availability of affordable housing options, and access to a robust transit system (which is one of the key drivers to attracting businesses). It’s my holistic approach to these issues, as well as my experience in policy, planning and zoning, that helps bring these projects to fruition.

My experience with historic preservation is as a student organization leader and ambassador at Texas A&M University, Parker University, and then Texas Southern University. Historical edifices or monuments are simply dead things unless the people who visit them find personal importance to their locations and places in history, so the emphasis has to be on passing along the memories, stories, and traditions that really make old landmarks into historical treasures. I think the current 252 pages of the Secretary of Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Propertiesines are very comprehensive, but that we might occasionally need other guidelines as exceptions in order to permit proposed improvements to historic sites not already allowed in those standards.

Historic preservation is key to connecting a city’s past and future, especially in cities growing as quickly as Fort Worth. One of the best ways to help the entire city preserve the history of Fort Worth neighborhoods is to help other neighborhoods imitate the Fairmount National Historic District’s thoughtful guidelines for rehabilitation, restoration, and new construction when applicable.

During my time on Council, I have worked alongside neighborhoods to secure and maintain historical designations. Historic preservation is an ongoing conversation with our past about our future – it helps provide a sense of place and continuity for future generations of Fort Worthians. I’ve worked closely with Historic Fort Worth, Inc., who is dedicated to preserving Fort Worth’s unique historic identity through stewardship, education and leadership.

I am proud of my work on Council where we’ve added additional staffing to the City’s Historical Preservation team, and I was instrumental with zoning and historic overlay, in planning ahead of the re-development of the Stockyards area. Even my husband’s office has won an award for his preservation efforts! I am by far the most knowledgeable and active candidate regarding historic preservation and its benefit to city planning and maintaining neighborhood integrity.

Over the past several years, I have participated and shared experiences in neighborhood watch meetings, town halls, conference calls, elections, community forums, political committees, door-to-door canvassing, campaigns, rallies, and public hearings.

I believe my background as a business leader, mother, and progressive change-maker makes me uniquely suited to unite our neighborhoods as One Fort Worth. Our city’s overlooked economic potential in under-resourced neighborhoods and growth outpacing infrastructure are rooted in the longstanding divisions within our city. From day one, this campaign has been uniting us into One Fort Worth. 

This pandemic has proven that we’re only as healthy as our sickest neighborhood. Shamefully, Fort Worth is home to the zip code with the lowest life expectancy in all of Texas. That same zip code now has one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in the country, which leads to increased infection rates all across our city. Our historic growth can be a great asset, but we have to ensure all our communities benefit from that growth. This requires making sure that benefits from infrastructure, bonds, and schools zones are shared widely throughout the city to help unite us into One Fort Worth.

More so than any of my counterparts in the Mayoral race, I have experience in assisting the residents of Fort Worth by connecting them to City services. Not only do I make sure constituents are connected, I always try to follow up to make sure their cares and concerns are handled. Much of my success in this area is due to my continued engagement with residents through my presence at neighborhood association meetings, bond hearings and public meetings to discuss improvements. It is through this engagement that every stakeholder has their voice heard – their input during the process increases the likelihood of initial buy-in, continued support, and a vested interest in the outcome.

I have been instrumental in empowering the Neighborhood Engagement Office to connect to neighborhood leadership directly, most recently, through the positive outcomes achieved by the TCU Neighbor to Neighbor program and the Rosemont Neighborhood Improvement Program. There is no other candidate who has been as active in connecting citizens to services than I have. Just ask the city staff – I am one of the top users of the app and have convinced more residents to use it!

Informally, forming neighborhood associations has become one way to encourage council members that represent their areas to take action on the policy and project proposals of their most outspoken members. The City of Fort Worth has given special recognition to Neighborhood Empowerment Zones with certain perks for development not offered in other areas of the city. I would rather see an organization where the neighborhood association boundaries are aligned with those of the electoral precincts within a district that ensures all precincts and neighborhoods are represented when reaching out to their district’s council representative.

Neighborhood associations are vital for good governance in many ways. Improved collaboration with Fort Worth’s neighborhood associations with the mayor and the city council are key to improving quality of life during the rapid growth of our city. Collaboration with neighborhood associations helps identify top neighborhood issues which helps with the city’s capital improvements programs and proposals for bonds. In addition, city partnership with neighborhood associations can help coordinate important initiatives such as the environment (Blue Zones Project), preventing elder abuse and fraud, improving equity, establishing community gardens, and planning neighborhood events such as parades and festivals.

I got my start in service to this community as a leader in my own neighborhood, so I am very familiar with the joys, challenges and time commitments that come with neighborhood leadership. During my time of service as the District 9 Councilmember, one of my greatest pleasures has been working closely and directly with the leadership of the Neighborhood Associations throughout District 9 and even some in other districts!

As Mayor, my role is to act as a convener – bringing community partners together with neighborhoods, as equally-positioned stakeholders, to understand exactly where our existing resources are and what additional resources are necessary, where partnerships already exist or new ones could be forged, and how we can move forward TOGETHER with positive solutions. This is about building consensus, not about getting votes to achieve a simple majority, thus leaving the minority behind.

I first acknowledge that despite real shortcomings, the city did demonstrate general preparedness and responsive communication. My approach to improving infrastructure is learned from information technology, to build redundancies to fall back on (rather than just tearing out old roads, pipes, and power lines to replace them with new ones). Unlike some cities, the City of Fort Worth does not own and operate its own municipal electrical utility services supplier; that could become an option in the future, alongside contracting to open additional electrical power generation facilities locally.

During my 30 year business career, I was successful in accomplishing many complicated projects by bringing together key decision-makers of all backgrounds to work together. I will use the same approach with preparing for infrastructure and communication coordination. I am a staunch proponent of a city being in control of its own destiny and want to preserve the voice of Fort Worth residents in making key infrastructure decisions. As we saw with the winter storm, too much burden and liability with utilities has been placed on Fort Worth residents. We need to take whatever measures possible to prevent utility price gouging of residents in vulnerable situations not of their making.

We will do everything in our power to ensure resilient, efficient energy sources power our neighborhoods and we avoid another mass utility failure. At the end of the day, dollars invested in public infrastructure provide some of the best return on investment possible for the city, and this should be a priority as we continue to grow. 

Regarding the specific response, I would use my 30 years of executive experience to bring all involved leaders to the table to ensure we avoid another mass failure and stunted response. It is a shame taxpayer dollars were wasted on the city sending out a robo-call with inaccurate boil water advisory information. We need to have plans in place to avoid the panic and scrambling we saw from city departments and officials across North Texas. Thank you to everyone who met some of their neighbors for the first time during the winter storm crisis when they went door to door checking on neighbors’ needs for food, water, firewood, blankets, and rides to shelters.

The recent freeze demonstrated Fort Worth’s critical need to update our aging infrastructure. While infrastructure is not the sexiest, most exciting issue, it is absolutely critical to our City and our residents. I am a certified city planner by the American Institute of Certified Planners and have both undergraduate and master’s degrees in city and regional planning from esteemed university programs. As Mayor, I will use my education and professional experience as a City Planner to work to improve this essential aspect of our City by taking a more holistic, proactive approach – rather than the reactive approach we’ve seen with the recent snow storm. We must continue to prioritize fixing the infrastructure we already have in place before we commit to extending services to new developments.

During my tenure on Council, we have continued to pursue new ways of communicating with our residents, particularly during emergencies and other times where critical information needs to reach the public. The key here is accessibility – how can we continue to provide information in an equitable way, i.e. in first languages, across methods they already have access to, and information that’s relevant/helpful. We have actually switched from Nixle to working a more robust communication platform, Fort Worth Texas Alerts, which connects the City to the residents via phone, email, text or app. It’s perfectly suited to handle both emergency communication, as well as regular day-to-day communication about City services.