• Keeping Taxes Low

Fort Worth has a history of being a livable city and cutting its property taxes year after year. It needs to stay that way. Brian would rather lean on a thriving business environment to bring in tax revenue than raise property taxes on city residents. Brian has fought on city council to keep property taxes low and, as Mayor, will continue to fight to lower property taxes even further.

• Attracting High Paying, Quality Jobs

The strength and hope of our economy and business sector are the talented entrepreneurs who are developing new products and services right here in Fort Worth. As a successful entrepreneur, Brian understands the unique challenges of starting a business. That’s why he always supports entrepreneurs who bring dynamic and worthwhile projects to the city. Because of our low regulation, ample space, bike trails, beautiful neighborhoods and Fort Worth friendliness, our city has attracted a bevy of corporate relocations. As Mayor, Brian will seek out the kinds of companies we want to move to Fort Worth – companies that pay high wages and provide healthy benefits – and he will meet with those company leaders to show them why Fort Worth is the ideal place to grow their business. He believes in bringing together the power and efforts of the Fort Worth Chambers of Commerce, Visit Fort Worth, the city’s Economic Development team, and when possible, the Texas Enterprise Fund. As mayor, Brian will work to make Fort Worth the most attractive city in Texas for new, quality, high paying jobs.

• An Educated, Job-Ready Workforce

Quality, high paying jobs require an educated workforce, and an educated workforce is the foundation of any strong city. An educated workforce will build our future and determine the well-being of our citizens. Brian intends to carry forward our city’s efforts toward improving third-grade literacy. By partnering and supporting non-profit efforts, we will see more of our kids complete college degrees. The city should continue to push for affordable childcare, public transit access to our community college campuses, and internet access for our school-aged kids. Brian’s plan is simple: bring our educators, institutions and employers together to ensure our local businesses can fill their jobs with not just four-year degree holders but also two-year degree holders and technical skilled workers.

• A Safe City

We all want to walk in our neighborhoods without fear. Business owners want to operate in stable, safe settings. Police officers bear the burden of these responsibilities, and Brian Byrd supports the police force. He supported the CCPD continuation election, and he has voted every year to ensure that our officers are well-equipped and trained. Better de-escalation training keeps everyone safer and Brian pushed for that training for our officers. Brian supported smart-policing adjustments made by our Police Chief. These programs mean that more mental health professionals can respond when an emergency involves someone in a mental health crisis. It also led to the creation of a non-sworn citizens division that responds to calls that don’t require a police officer.

• A Welcoming City

When our young people move away for college and don’t return, we miss their vision, energy, and talent. Fort Worth is one of the more diverse big cities in America. We want to see all our graduates complete further training or education and enjoy adventurous, successful careers in Fort Worth. Brian led the development of TCL Lead, a city-wide mentoring program for Black and Latino entrepreneurs and business leaders.

• Efficient Government

We need justice for the vulnerable among us and opportunity for those who desire success. But the old ways of spending tax dollars need to be replaced with an entrepreneurial spirit. On a per capita basis, Fort Worth is one of the most efficient city governments in the State of Texas. But we can do better. As a councilman, Brian continually pressed for efficiency – see his video here. Starting a drop-in center for human trafficking victims, and developing a mentoring program for minorities are just two examples of how Brian has led with out-of-the-box thinking and a hands-on approach. We can do more. ^[34]

• POSITIVE POLICIES, NOT DIVISIVE PARTISAN POLITICS.

Mattie Parker knows it takes principled leaders, not politicians, to provide a safer and stronger Fort Worth. She will make sure the Mayor’s policies remain nonpartisan because the last thing our city needs is Washington-style division that pits neighbor against neighbor. The best way to lead our great city is with honesty and a commitment to bringing people together from all walks of life to develop solutions for our most pressing issues.

• INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP THAT LEAVES NO FAMILY BEHIND.

As Fort Worth Mayor, Mattie will focus on helping every community in every part of our city thrive. She believes all families regardless of zip code should have the same opportunity for prosperity and safety. This requires focusing on aging neighborhoods that could use a boost with more jobs, better roads to reduce traffic, career training for our next generation and classrooms of excellence for all students.

• A TAXPAYER WATCHDOG TO KEEP CITY HALL EFFICIENT.

During her tenure as Chief of Staff to Mayor Betsy Price, Mattie served as the go-to leader to improve efficiency at City Hall and develop innovative cost-saving measures to save tax dollars. As our next Mayor, she will continue these efforts to protect taxpayers and look for additional ways to provide property tax relief for homeowners. This requires focusing our city budget on the basic services that have the biggest impact on our lives.

• SAFER NEIGHBORHOODS WITH WELL-FUNDED POLICE SERVICES.

Mattie will support strong police and fire services and push back against any efforts to defund our police force. Only with well-funded law enforcement can we best protect our neighborhoods and schools from violent crime. She also will work with non-profits and education leaders to ensure more students have the job training they need to succeed in today’s workforce – giving young adults real world skills and hope for a brighter future.

Protecting our neighborhoods

• Serve as a careful steward and watchdog of our tax dollars
• Introduce state-of-the-art technology and training for Fort Worth police and fire
• Encourage frequent and consistent conversations between police and neighborhoods
• Advocate for responsible oversight of our Crime Control Prevention District to make sure our public safety resources are focused in areas with the most need
• Create and maintain quality and convenient city parks and recreation areas for all neighborhoods

Inclusive leadership

• Work with health officials to secure access to quality healthcare for all neighborhoods, including COVID-19 vaccines and treatment
• Connect all neighborhoods to jobs, schools and health centers with affordable and convenient transportation
• Create public-private support and assimilation services for the homeless
• Establish new partnerships to eliminate food deserts from all Fort Worth neighborhoods
• Ensure that all neighborhoods have quality streets, sidewalks and streetlights

Innovative problem solver

• Create public-private cooperation to attract new businesses for quality jobs for all Fort Worth citizens, especially low income areas that could use a boost
• Cut red-tape from City Hall to encourage small business growth
• Connect City Hall with neighborhood schools to create collegiate and vocational learning opportunities for all Fort Worth public schools
• Establish Fort Worth as a new hub for small business innovation and opportunity
• Connect Fort Worth parents to early childhood education resources for all Fort Worth children

Responsive to all citizens of Fort Worth

• Promote a more inclusive approach so all citizens feel welcome to offer input into the future of our city
• Schedule City government meetings in all council districts in our community
• Maintain an open door to the Mayor’s office at all times
• Require all city departments to adopt a customer-first environment at City Hall
• Will regularly attend neighborhood meetings with Police Chief
• Work closely with neighborhood leaders who best understand the unique issues facing their community

Growing our economy through innovation

• Focus economic development efforts on competing in a global economy, aggressively pursuing the next corporate relocation opportunity for Fort Worth
• Embrace and support entrepreneurs to help grow our economy and develop new, high-paying jobs
• Make Fort Worth the next great American success story using a shared vision of prosperity to shape our economic future.
• Invest in our students and young adults to prepare them for the workforce of tomorrow and attract and retain the best and brightest in our community
• Continue supporting a business-friendly climate at City Hall that enables our businesses to grow and flourish.

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• One Fort Worth

Our city has so much untapped potential, but previous leadership has overlooked the changes and growth that have taken place in Fort Worth. We can’t afford to continue to be a city for only the wealthy and well-connected.

This historic crisis has made it painfully clear that our city suffers when leaders prioritize one group over another. Now more than ever, we need a mayor who will listen to community members of all backgrounds and unite us into One Fort Worth.

• Healthcare

Especially in a pandemic, we must approach healthcare with the mindset that we’re only as strong as our weakest link. We’re only as healthy as our sickest neighborhood.

Long before the public health crisis, Fort Worth passed on simple, cost-effective solutions that would have dramatically improved the baseline health and wellness of its residents. Past leaders even eliminated the city’s health department. As a result, Fort Worth has long been 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.

As a city, we must prioritize increasing access to healthcare in a way that avoids skyrocketing costs. Too many of our neighborhoods lack access to a nearby pharmacy or community health center. By targeting these pharmacy deserts, we can increase the standard of care for our most vulnerable communities and build the necessary infrastructure for COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots to make our whole city more healthy.

In these times, the most vulnerable among us are marked not only by zip code, but also by age. Our children are living through an incredibly stressful period in American history. From the global uncertainty brought by the pandemic to repeated acts of violence brought by a failing criminal justice system, caring for the mental health of our children must be a priority. I support working with area school boards to increase funding for mental health care and counseling in schools. With summer approaching, the city must create new, pandemic-safe summer volunteering and job-training programs to provide additional social support systems for our children.

• Justice

This past year has brought renewed attention to long-standing inequities in our criminal justice system. To have a city that truly aims to provide equal treatment under the law, we must achieve equal treatment by law enforcement.

It is critical that we have a properly funded police department with top-notch training. However, it is concerning that city leaders in the past have ignored the will of the voters who specifically voted for a half-cent tax increase to fund police training as well as intervention and prevention programs. Unfortunately, city leaders have not respected residents’ desire to fund intervention and prevention programs, which is why we must have greater accountability and oversight into taxpayer-funded programs such as the CCPD half-cent tax.

The goal of our criminal justice system should be to promote public safety. This goes beyond community policing and de-escalation training. Many of our city’s problems with public safety can be attributed to an imbalanced approach in promoting public safety. Crime intervention and prevention programs in the community can prevent many potential safety issues before a police officer is called. Unfortunately, our city has not allocated proper resources to these programs, which puts an unnecessarily heavy burden on our overextended police force.

Too often our city leaders turn a blind eye to accountability once an issue has left the headlines. Our goal should be to have a high-quality police force, which means we cannot time and time again allow back repeat offenders with no real consequences.

• Education

As a year living with the pandemic drags on, we must do everything possible to prevent this from being a lost year for our schoolchildren. Bringing parents, teachers, and scientific experts to the table is the only way we can move forward in a way that’s best for all of our children. It is key that parents are informed of CDC guidelines to keep schools safe and repeatedly invited to see how those safety recommendations are implemented in all our classrooms.

We have work to do in re-establishing trust between trust between parents and schools in all our neighborhoods. It should never be the case that a parent has reason to doubt a school’s ability to keep students safe. The city should prioritize vaccinations for teachers and establish an oversight body to ensure all schools have the proper resources and have successfully implemented safety measures.

In the past, our city’s leadership has been too aggressive and adversarial toward our popularly elected school boards. Instead, our mayor needs to be an effective partner in progress with our school boards to ensure our city fulfills its responsibility to offer a high-quality education for all our students.

Given the needs of our city’s workforce, we have a responsibility to equip our high schools with top-notch job training and apprenticeship programs. We are lucky to have such a broad array of employers in our city, and it is incumbent upon the city and its school boards to partner with these employers to help create specialized, accredited job training programs that put students on a path to starting quality jobs after graduation.

• Economy

Fort Worth is America’s 13th largest city because of our incredibly high growth rate. This creates a wealth of opportunity that past leaders have failed to fully utilize. Leaning on three decades as a senior executive in the business world, we must look to proven tools for economic growth: targeted business incentives, investments in previously ignored communities, and economic relief based on need instead of insider connections.

Too many of our attempts to attract new businesses to Fort Worth have resulted in the city giving away the store without assurances that companies will create jobs where we need them most. 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.

It is a shame that the city ignored free federal dollars for coronavirus relief. In this time of profound financial pain, city leaders need to follow the guidance of top economists and institute large-scale relief efforts now to prevent worse economic pain in the future. Any sort of relief application process that prioritizes the wealthy and well-connected cannot be tolerated.

Finally, our leaders need to recognize that cities are at a disadvantage in attracting new businesses when they turn a blind eye to systemic racial and social inequities. All across the country, we are seeing big job creators boycott states and areas that do not embrace diversity. With so many people of so many backgrounds calling Fort Worth home, we need to break with the old ways and recognize this diversity for the strength that it is for our city.

• Infrastructure

Throughout Texas and the South, we see cautionary tales of awful traffic in fast-growing cities that do not properly address their infrastructure needs. Adding lanes and widening roads is not enough to handle traffic in a city that’s growing as fast as Fort Worth is.

Investing in public transit—particularly light rail—must be a priority to prevent major congestion, just as it has in cities across the country. Fort Worth cannot be a city that’s impossible to access without a vehicle, especially the airport and major economic centers.

The concept of infrastructure must go beyond trains, roads, and bridges. We need to take a holistic approach to infrastructure investment that focuses on issues like eliminating food deserts and broadband dead zones.

As vaccine distribution continues to be a priority for our nation and our city, we need to look to success stories across the country to meet people where they are with vaccine distribution. Fort Worth’s mayor needs to be a more proactive partner with state and federal officials to ensure our city doesn’t continue to be underserved. Exploring the use of vaccine supersites and mobile distribution units will help our city get back on track to safely and fully reopen as fast as possible.
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The Mayor’s job is not politics. The Mayor's job is to ensure that the City of Fort Worth is run in the most efficient, effective, and professional manner possible. The job is to protect the residents and taxpayers of Fort Worth and make sure that every single person in Fort Worth has all the opportunities this city has to offer: a safe community; a clean city; housing they can afford; a job that affords them a fair and livable wage; a quality education for their children; and equal access to all that this city has to offer.

That’s why as mayor, Ann Zadeh’s platform includes all of the following:

• TRANSPORTATION

Creating, supporting, and improving a multimodal transportation system is a top priority for Ann as Mayor of Fort Worth. This would include multiple actions aligned with the mission of the Tarrant Transit Alliance, including educating, empowering and mobilizing our community to promote transit. A multimodal system that offers options and choices for residents and visitors to the City is what we should provide as a world-class City.

• Transit Policy Proposals

Creating, supporting, and improving a multimodal transportation system would be a top priority for me as Mayor of Fort Worth. This would include multiple actions aligned with the mission of Tarrant Transit Alliance, 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 $2T funding for infrastructure projects, including mass transit, especially rail. Fort Worth needs a piece of that, and we can’t let another opportunity to provide improved transit options slip through our fingers. A multimodal transit system that offers options and choices for residents and visitors of the city is what residents and visitors to any world-class city expect. This is not about forcing any one mode on people; it’s about choice and opportunity.

While personally I believe the main benefits of a multimodal transit system involve issues of safety, equity, and environmental quality, the financial/economic benefits are also persuasive. For every $1 invested in public transportation, approximately $4 in economic returns are generated. For every ten million dollars of transit investment made, business sales increase by thirty million dollars. In addition, residential property near high-frequency transit service is more valuable, which means cities reap greater tax revenues. Transit agencies also employ people themselves, as well as help people get to their jobs. I support transit-oriented development and infrastructure that supports transit and transit-oriented development in appropriate locations. All of this benefits existing businesses and the potential growth of these businesses, as well as attracting new businesses to our city. More and more businesses looking to relocate will include the availability of public transit as an important criteria in their move decision. For example, the Amazon 2 Headquarters decision.

In addition to economic benefits, public transportation reduces air pollution, increases aggregate fuel efficiency, reduces congestion, saves money, increases mobility, frees up time and is safer. These factors also improve equity in our community, providing mobility to our neighbors who need access to jobs and educational opportunities.

Complete Streets / Vision Zero
The recently adopted Complete Streets and Vision Zero policies are right on target - they're moving us in the right direction towards improving our transportation system. Fort Worth has a pedestrian fatality rate of 2.8/100K. By this measure, we are the 44th most dangerous place to walk in America (of the 200 largest cities). We can and should do better. I support the Safe Systems approach to street safety. We must have the foresight to design our streets to accommodate ALL users, be they on foot, in their vehicle, on a bike or utilizing public transit.

We should strive to create as many walkable neighborhoods as possible, where residents are within a 15-minute walk to employment, healthy food, medical care, education, entertainment and leisure activities. With these policies in place, we can build new streets, rehab existing streets, and incentivize land uses and development with a multimodal transit design that further realizes the necessary components to develop a system that serves all.

Sprawl
Fort Worth is the 10th most sprawling city in the country. Sprawl forces us to drive farther for less, which in turn, adds pollution, reduces greenspace, and encourages us to walk/bike less. Many neighborhoods in Fort Worth have been hollowed out by sprawl-inducing highways. I support targeted investment and increased density in key areas to create walkable communities, especially around TRE and TexRail stations for those who desire a more urban living environment. I support reinvesting in existing communities where we already have good infrastructure and let the proceeds accrue to residents, particularly in areas where we can prioritize access to rail options.

Greenways
Mayor Price embraced cycling, as such, we now have an impressive and growing network of bike lanes. Our bike lanes must adequately protect our citizens who use them. I want to take cycling to the next level and create greenways that touch every neighborhood in town. I want it to be possible for all of us to hop on a bike and catch a bike path or park within a reasonable distance.

• JOBS

The quality of life of every person in Fort Worth is directly tied to the availability of good paying, quality jobs. Ann will actively work to attract new businesses to Fort Worth, particularly “new economy,” good paying jobs. The kinds of jobs that allow workers to support a family, buy a home, and enjoy the quality of life that Fort Worth has to offer.

• HOUSING

Over the last few years, the cost of housing in Fort Worth has gone through the roof. Whereas only a few years ago, quality first homes and desirable, convenient rental properties were largely affordable, today even modest housing can be priced out of reach of even two earner families. Ann Zadeh has fought for affordable housing options during her time on the council. As Mayor, she will be able to fight that much harder to ensure that there are affordable housing options available for all residents.

• ETHICS AND TRANSPARENCY

Recently, the Fort Worth City Council voted to disband the city’s long standing Ethics Commission. For years prior to disbanding the city’s ethics watchdog, the Council had effectively neutered it by refusing to appoint new commissioners to expired terms. Both of these were affronts to integrity in government. As Mayor I will not only reinstate the Ethics Commission and appoint new, independent citizen commissioners, but I would also support a thorough examination and strengthening of the city’s ethics rules.

• INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING

This council will oversee redistricting of city council districts including the addition of two new districts. Traditionally, the drawing of district lines is a process greatly influenced by the sitting council members who are more interested in protecting their own interests than drawing fair, sensible lines. I have consistently supported the appointment of an independent Redistricting Committee. The drawing of district lines should not be gerrymandered to protect sitting council members. It’s bad enough that is how congressional and state legislative districts are drawn. We should NOT make the same mistakes locally.

• CITIZEN POLICE REVIEW BOARD

The report of the recent Race and Culture Task Force recommended the formation of a citizens police review board. There is no reason the actions of the police should be above review by the residents of Fort Worth… the people the police are there to protect and to serve. It is a perfectly reasonable and common practice and is done in virtually every major city in America. There is no reason we cannot do the same.

I hope to discuss these and many other issues in the course of this campaign. Only with your support can we make these and other positive changes to help make Fort Worth the city we all want and deserve. ^[34]