Fort Worth kills proposed street maintenance fee over concerns about costs to residents
Fort Worth residents won’t have a fee added to their water bills after the city scrapped a plan for an extra charge to cover street maintenance.
The proposed fee would have added $9.22 per month to residents’ water bills to cover a roughly $60 million gap in the amount of money needed for the city to maintain its 8,100 miles of road.
However, Fort Worth city council member Michael Crain argued now is not the right time to add a fee when people are feeling the economic pinch from inflation.
It’s not clear whether the city would have the capacity to use the extra money right away if Fort Worth added the new fee in the upcoming fiscal year, Crain said.
He pointed to a recent City Council work session during which transportation and public works director Lauren Prieur said it would take at least three years to get the program up and running.
Crain also argued the process for proposing the fee was flawed. He said it should have been discussed as part of the larger 2025 budget so the council could weigh the need against other priorities.
“We have a fixed amount of tax dollars, and we have to make choices about where we want to invest,” he said.
