Follow the Money: A Citizen's Playbook for Shaping Fort Worth's $2 Billion Budget

Two Billion Dollars. One Question: Who's at the Table?

Fort Worth's annual city budget exceeds $2 billion. That figure funds police and fire departments, parks and libraries, street maintenance, code enforcement, housing programs, and dozens of other services that touch residents' lives every single day. It is, in the most literal sense, a statement of civic values — a document that reveals what this city believes is worth paying for.

And yet, for most Fort Worth residents, the budget process is nearly invisible. It happens in conference rooms and council chambers, driven by department directors, city managers, and elected officials who are responsive — but only when constituents make themselves heard. The good news is that the process is not closed. It is, by design, open to public participation. The challenge is knowing how to engage it effectively.

This guide is FW Action's blueprint for turning budget season into a civic opportunity.

How the Fort Worth Budget Process Actually Works

Fort Worth operates on a fiscal year that runs from October 1 through September 30. That means the budget governing city services from October 2025 through September 2026 will be drafted, debated, and adopted between roughly April and September of 2025. Understanding this cycle is the prerequisite for meaningful participation.

The process moves through several distinct phases:

Phase 1 — Departmental Requests (February–April): Individual city departments submit budget requests to the City Manager's Office, outlining what they need to maintain or expand services. This phase is largely internal, but it sets the parameters for everything that follows.

Phase 2 — City Manager's Proposed Budget (August): The City Manager consolidates departmental requests and presents a recommended budget to the City Council. This document is public and represents the administration's policy priorities in numerical form.

Phase 3 — Public Hearings and Council Deliberation (August–September): This is the primary window for community input. The City Council holds public hearings at which any resident may speak. Council members may amend the proposed budget before final adoption.

Phase 4 — Budget Adoption (September): The Council votes to adopt the final budget, which takes effect October 1.

Missing the public hearing phase is the single most common mistake advocates make. By the time a budget is formally adopted, the margins for change are narrow. The most effective advocacy happens during Phase 2 and early Phase 3, when council members are still forming their positions.

The Key Decision-Makers You Need to Know

Effective budget advocacy requires understanding who holds authority at each stage of the process.

The City Manager: Fort Worth operates under a council-manager form of government, meaning the City Manager functions as the chief executive of city operations. The City Manager's proposed budget carries enormous weight. Engaging the City Manager's Office early — including through formal budget input processes — is worth the effort.

City Council Members: All eight district council members and the mayor vote on the final budget. District council members are particularly responsive to constituents within their own districts. If your priority is neighborhood infrastructure in District 8, your District 8 council member is your primary target.

Budget and Management Services Department: This department coordinates the budget process and is the technical authority on fiscal matters. Staff members from this department can answer specific questions about how line items are structured and where discretionary funding exists.

Advisory Boards and Commissions: Fort Worth has numerous advisory bodies — including those focused on housing, parks, and public health — that provide recommendations to the council. Serving on or presenting to these bodies is an underutilized advocacy pathway.

Real-World Wins: When Community Advocacy Moved the Numbers

Skepticism about whether public comment actually changes anything is understandable. But Fort Worth's recent budget history offers meaningful examples of community pressure producing measurable results.

In recent years, sustained advocacy from tenant rights organizations and housing nonprofits contributed to increased allocations for rental assistance and affordable housing programs within the city's community development budget. Advocates did not simply show up to a single hearing — they organized coordinated testimony, submitted written comments, held meetings with individual council members, and built coalitions with faith institutions and neighborhood associations.

Similarly, advocates for expanded library hours and after-school programming have successfully defended funding lines that were targeted for reduction during tight fiscal years. The pattern in both cases is consistent: organized, sustained, multi-channel engagement outperforms isolated individual testimony.

The lesson is not that the process is easy. It is that the process is winnable when communities treat it as a campaign rather than a single event.

Your Strategic Advocacy Timeline

The following framework is designed to help organizations and individual advocates structure their engagement across the full budget cycle.

January–March: Research the current year's adopted budget. Identify specific line items relevant to your priorities. Fort Worth's budget documents are publicly available on the city's website and are more readable than most people assume. Look for year-over-year trends — is funding for your priority area growing, flat, or declining?

April–June: Begin relationship-building with council offices. Request meetings with your district council member or their chief of staff. Come prepared with data, not just grievances. Quantify the need you are addressing and, where possible, propose specific funding amounts rather than general increases.

July–August: When the City Manager's proposed budget is released, analyze it immediately. Issue a public response through your organization's channels. Mobilize your network to attend public hearings. Coordinate testimony so that multiple speakers reinforce a unified message rather than repeating identical points.

August–September: Attend every public hearing you can. Submit written comments in addition to oral testimony — written comments become part of the official record. Maintain pressure through constituent calls and emails to council offices during deliberation.

October onward: After the budget is adopted, document what changed and what did not. Hold elected officials accountable to commitments made during the process. Begin preparing for the following cycle.

How to Speak Budget: Tips for Effective Public Testimony

Public comment periods are typically limited to two or three minutes per speaker. That constraint demands precision.

Begin by stating your name, your district, and your organizational affiliation. Immediately pivot to a specific, concrete ask: not "we need more funding for mental health services" but "we are asking the council to allocate $500,000 to expand the Mental Health Connection's co-responder program to cover all eight council districts."

Support your ask with one or two compelling data points. If you have a personal story that illustrates the issue, use it — but keep it brief and connect it explicitly to the policy solution.

Close by making the political stakes clear. Who is watching this decision? How many constituents does your organization represent? What will you do with the council's response? Elected officials respond to organized constituencies, not just compelling arguments.

Avoid jargon, avoid lengthy historical context, and avoid expressing frustration in ways that alienate potential allies on the dais. The goal of public testimony is persuasion, and persuasion requires meeting your audience where they are.

Budget Advocacy as Civic Power

At FW Action, we view the annual budget process as one of the most concrete expressions of civic power available to Fort Worth residents. Unlike elections, which occur on fixed schedules, the budget cycle recurs every year. Every year is an opportunity to advance community priorities, defend hard-won gains, and hold local government accountable to the full range of people it serves.

The communities that fare best in budget negotiations are not necessarily the wealthiest or the most politically connected. They are the most organized — the ones who show up consistently, who speak with specificity, who build relationships before they need favors, and who understand that civic engagement is a long-term practice, not a one-time event.

Fort Worth's $2 billion budget belongs to its residents. Claiming a meaningful share of that power begins with showing up and knowing what to say when you get there.

Resources to Get Started:

• Fort Worth Budget and Management Services: fortworthtexas.gov/budget
• Texas Comptroller's Local Government Finance Resources: comptroller.texas.gov
• FW Action Community Advocacy Training: fwact.org/training
• Sign up for city council meeting notifications through the Fort Worth City Secretary's Office