Despite town halls and meetings galore, Fort Worth task force still plugs away
After two town halls, more than 40 community outreach meetings and comments from over 900 citizens, the Fort Worth Task Force on Race & Culture is now in its seventh month of operation since its members were appointed in August 2017.
The committee of 23 Fort Worth residents has been meeting to discuss disparities that community members face. It must produce a report with findings and recommendations to the City Council on how Fort Worth can become a more equal place to live.
Michelle Gutt, director of the communications and public engagement, said the task force originally scheduled more than 30 Community Conversations, but after seeing how much information was coming out of them, it scheduled 14 more, calling them Continuing the Conversation meetings.
These were all held in different parts of the city to enable more people to attend.
It also held two larger town halls, one in October and another in March, to give residents another platform to express their concerns, where people addressed topics ranging from access to food and education to the lack of understanding of different communities of color.
Task force members work on one of six subcommittees: criminal justice, economic development, education, health, housing and transportation. Each one is charged with investigating its respective topic and coming up with recommendations and proposals of what the community can do to reduce the pertaining disparities.
Each subcommittee is in the process of meeting with experts and gathering data, according to Gutt.
Katie Sherrod, the communications director for the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and chair of the housing subcomittee, explained that the topics for each committee were decided based on concerns that were brought up during community conversations.
Her team, she said, has been consulting with housing experts, city and county staffers and Habitat for Humanity in order to understand the issues at hand and which resources are and aren't available.
"In housing, there's a whole history of governmental policies that determined who was able to accumulate wealth and housing," Sherrod said. "Legal segregation, access to loans, government policies that don't exist now but did for many, many years. The impact of them is still being felt."
Ty Stimpson, an attorney in Fort Worth who serves as the chair of the criminal justice subcommittee, said that his group has been looking into diversity within the Fort Worth Police Department and its specialized units. In meeting with the police, Stimpson said everyone agreed that diversity was an area that needed improvement.
"We're all striving for the same goal, and that's to make Fort Worth the best city in America," he said. "It's going to take regaining the community's trust with law enforcement for that goal to be possible but we're all working to see that that happens."
The task force was originally appointed following the arrest of Jacqueline Craig in December 2016. Craig’s case resulted in public outcry and brought to the surface the concerns of racial and cultural inequalities in the city.
The first interim report will be presented at City Hall on May 1. The final report was originally set to be due in August 2018 but presiding co-chair Rosa Navejar said they would request an extension until the end of the year.
The task force meets every third Monday of the month. A copy of the March 19 agenda can be found here. Videos of previous meetings can be viewed here.
Task Force on Race & Culture
Monday, March 19, 2018, 5:00 p.m.
Oak Hall
Deborah Beggs Moncrief Garden Center
3220 Botanic Garden Boulevard, Fort Worth, Texas 76107
This story was originally published March 16, 2018 at 6:46 PM with the headline "Despite town halls and meetings galore, Fort Worth task force still plugs away."