Westover Hills Mayor Earle Shields concedes that as municipalities go, his is pretty easy to govern.
It has no businesses, apartments, schools or even churches -- just 682 mostly affluent residents preferring privacy, peace and quiet on the west side of Fort Worth. Private security and a comparatively large municipal police force help keep it that way."We have 15 folks on the police force," Shields says. "With our ratio of Police Department employees to residents, we're right at the top of everybody's lists. We keep those cars out on the road all the time to let the bad guys know we're looking for them."Bad guys would certainly tend to stand out in Westover Hills, where little ever changes, and many of the area's most prominent families go back generations. According to the 2010 Census, Westover Hills grew by only 24 residents since 2000. In 2000, 99.2 percent of the town's homes were owner-occupied. That figure plummeted, sort of, in 10 years, to an estimated 98.9 percent."We're landlocked," Shields said. "The town was done in three developments, and the last one was quite a few years ago. There are no more lots available."Long synonymous with wealth, Westover Hills remains one of Tarrant County's richest municipalities. Its median household income rose from $200,001 in 2000 to more than $250,000 nine years later, according to the American Community Survey.What has changed, according to the survey, is the community's age. In 2009, 55.3 percent of Westover Hills households include residents 65 or older, up from 38 percent 10 years before. The percentage of households with children also fell. Shields, the mayor, is himself a robust 90 years old.The mayor isn't sure what that means for the future of Westover Hills."I don't know the answer to that question," he said. "I guess you would need a demographic expert. But change goes on all the time. I do know that we have a lot of second- and third-generation folks. I see a lot of houses being remodeled or rebuilt, or torn down and rebuilt. So things are constantly being upgraded."We have a low crime rate," he says. "We keep up with the sewer and the roads. It's just a nice quiet place. I guess you could even call it secluded. We don't have anything else. There are just not many folks like us."Tim Madigan, 817-390-7544
Population: 682
Unemployment rate: 0
Racial minorities: 3.3 percent
25 and older with college degrees: 81.3 percent
Mean household income: $398,883
Households with people under 18: 23.7 percent (lowest in Tarrant)
2000 households with people under 18: 27.9 percent Mean commute time: 18.9 minutes
Houses without a mortgage: 62.2 percent
Median mortgage payment: $4,001
Sources: 2009 American Community Survey, 2010 U.S. Census
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