The Exit Interview: A Conversation With Outgoing Mayor Betsy Price

Betsy Price — at press time still the mayor of Fort Worth — leads a pack of cyclists on a chillier-than-expected April afternoon. Though Price is clad in a professional cycling kit and helmet, leaving one to think she could break into a sprint at any moment, the ride’s pace never goes beyond that of a jaunty cruise. Because Price is chatting with fellow cyclists through the majority of the 7-mile journey, a ride that requires little exertion makes sense. 

The mayor begins the ride out front and, ever so slowly, meanders her way to the back of the peloton, making sure to speak to nearly every person who joined her for the short trek. Her fellow riders come prepared with questions, concerns, or just an itch to say hi and maybe snap a photo for their Instagram story. And she obliges with answers, quips, and a smile for the camera. 

This ride was the penultimate of the mayor’s final “Rolling Town Hall” meetings. Much like it sounds, it’s essentially a town hall that Price conducts on her bike. Ever open to the public, such rides have become a staple of the five-term mayor’s time at City Hall. While questions are normal at such events, so is an outpouring of adulation. 

While it’s safe to say Price has been a popular mayor (five terms don’t come easily), she will readily admit the expanding city has dealt with its fair share of growing pains during her decade in office. As a parting gift, we wanted to ask the outgoing mayor about some of her successes as well as some of her failures. After requesting an interview, the always-affable mayor granted a couple of our editors a 90-minute meeting. Price spoke candidly and thoughtfully about her time in office, how she grades her performance, and whether the city is headed in the right direction.

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(The below manuscript has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

Politics

FW: Why did you run for mayor?

Mayor Betsy Price: I was raised in a family that believed you take what you’ve been given, and you give it back to your community. 

I first ran for tax assessor because my business [required me to work] with the office, and it was a mess. For years I said somebody needed to straighten that office out. And, finally, my family and my clients said, “Well, you should run for that office.” 

And we did, and we cleaned that office up. We improved it from one of the most inefficient offices in the state to the most efficient. We earned a lot of national awards and had huge success. And, so, people started saying, “You’ve got to straighten out the city finances. You need to get this city back on track.”

I said no for six months after Mike [Moncrief] announced his retirement. But the requests for me to run just kept coming. And, finally, my family and my minister said, “You’ve got a door open; you should step through it.”

So, I did, and I won. Ten years later, I’m still here. Serving the community has been a passion of mine all my life, whether it’s PTA or Sunday School, or Cub Scouts, or Junior League. I’ve always done something.

FW: So public service just seems to be in your nature.

BP: It isn’t politics. I hate politics.

FW: You’re a Republican, but you’ve managed to remain mostly nonpartisan while serving as mayor. You even led two pride parades, something that would go against your party platform. What’s your trick to remaining so well liked by people on both sides of the aisle?

BP: This is a nonpartisan office. You’re not elected on a partisan platform, you’re elected to serve, and you’re elected to serve everybody. Good governance happens in the middle. Clearly, I lean a little right, half my friends lean a little left, but I have to be here to serve everybody. And I think people know I’m interested in the service. They know I’m a fiscal conservative, and even my friends who are on the liberal side tend to be a little more fiscally concerned. If you look at major cities nationwide, the cities that are in the best shape are those that are fiscally conservative. We’re the only major city in Texas to settle our pension issues locally. 

I want people to know that I’m real sincere about service and about listening to everybody. And why not go to a pride parade? Why not be in Black churches? Or Hispanic churches? I mean, that’s what you do.

You don’t govern well behind a desk, so you go where people are, and you hear their issues, and you let them know you care.

FW: Yet, one could easily surmise the current mayoral race has become more political. Do you worry local politics are becoming too partisan?

BP: I do. There was a little of that the first time I ran because I had served as a Republican officeholder. But once you develop your reputation, [the label] kind of goes away. And then it really surfaced again last election because Deborah Peoples was chairman of the Democrat party. And she’s a great gal, but she clearly wanted to make the race very political, and you’re seeing that again this race. I don’t know who or what’s driving it, but it does worry me because this isn’t a political office.

FW: What is the threat of bringing partisanship into this office?

BP: If you’re elected mayor by being partisan, then you’re really serving one group and not another. I just think everybody needs to feel comfortable coming in to see the mayor. And everybody needs to be comfortable inviting the mayor and knowing that, if you’re available, you’ll go.

I’ve probably been in this community more than any other mayor, and I think that’s critical. And I think that’s the real risk when you get partisan; you’re now dividing your community. Most people are not real hardcore right or left, but there are extremes on either side. 

I did an interview for The Washington Post recently, and they asked, “What do you think is wrong with politics?” I said, “I think the extremes on either side are driving this, and people have forgotten that you’ve got to listen to every voice.”

But the far right and the far left don’t want to listen to each other’s voices.

Politics aren’t relevant to what we do. The standard joke is that potholes don’t care whether you’re Democrat or Republican. 

FW: You chose to endorse Mattie Parker in the upcoming election. While she served as your chief of staff, you’ve also worked closely with councilmembers Brian Byrd and Ann Zadeh. Do you think either of them might’ve felt thrown under the bus following your endorsement? 

BP: I’m sure they weren’t really happy that I [endorsed Parker], but I’ve worked with all of them, and I felt like, for the future of the city, Mattie would be the best-balanced leader who’s here for the service and isn’t looking for a next office and doesn’t have an agenda on one side or the other.

Public Transportation

FW: What do you think needs to happen in the next five to 10 years for Fort Worth’s public transit system to draw more choice riders?

BP: I really think public transit, and not just here but all over, has got to reinvent itself. Unless you’re in a city like New York or LA — that are incredibly dense — large cities like us that are spread out, I think they’ve got to get a lot more innovative. 

We’ve been trying to move away from a hub and spoke system, where all the buses feed into the central center here and then back out, because it’s incredibly time-consuming.

You just got to make it more appealing. You have got to offer more choices for people. Smaller buses seem to be more attractive for people because they’re quicker. And for those using the system to go to work, covered bus stops are a big deal, too. 

I just think that the nation as a whole and transit systems everywhere are on the cusp of major innovative changes.

FW: What do you think we can realistically expect out of TEXRail in the next decade? 

BP: Realistically, I hope we can increase the ridership of it to the airport. I think the transit-oriented development that’s coming in on the backside of Vickery and Main will help with that ridership. I think if we can run TEXRail into the hospital district, south, that’s a realistic goal.

FW: What about high-speed rail? 

BP: I don’t know that it makes sense. I’ve long said what makes sense is the third station is Arlington, and that, in my opinion, would be an entertainment stop. So, that’s a special game-day train; every bullet train doesn’t stop there. Now, Arlington would probably be unhappy with me saying that, but having to stop in Arlington [every time] kind of negates the high-speed rail piece.

I think a terminus in Dallas, and in Fort Worth, and then you go south from here, but with game-day trains that stop in Arlington.

FW: Why even have two high-speed rail stations?

BP: Because you’ve got two major centers of population. You’re not going to drive to Dallas to get on the bullet train. I mean, you might, but it makes a lot more sense to get on it here if you’re on the west side of the metroplex.

I think just the sheer presence of a high-speed rail station is a huge draw for development for your community. And you need to go into Austin, San Antonio, and clear down to the border to ultimately make high-speed rail a connected system, and you need to be able to go to Oklahoma City. [The federal government] isn’t going to fund this if it’s not a system. They’ve already said repeatedly, for 10 years, high-speed rail has to be a system that could connect. You want the system to serve the whole state. 

It’s one of the issues that [former Dallas mayor] Mike Rawlings and I agreed on, was a regional approach. I’ve worked hard for years with Mike on building this region. We’re better together on some issues, and high-speed rail is one of them.

Education

FW: We’ve got, because of COVID, some historic regression going on in terms of third-grade literacy. You’ve talked about everybody needing to get on board with extra hours this summer to help lagging kids. But beyond that, do you think the volunteer mission of Read Fort Worth is lagging?

BP: It’s lagging with COVID.

FW: But it was lagging before then. In terms of signing up all these volunteers to go into the schools. Why is that?

BP: It’s multi-pronged. I don’t have the perfect solution. I mean, it’s a lot of work to say to somebody, “Give us an hour once a week out of your day to go to this school.”

And we knew it would be hard slugging; it was a hugely optimistic goal [to have 100% literacy among third graders by] 2025. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and you’ve got to have a goal. And, so, if it builds slower than you like, at least it’s still building. 

FW: So, in your mind, how important of an issue is this?

BP: I think it’s one of the biggest issues facing the city. I’m on calls with major city mayors nearly every week, and it’s consistently one of the biggest concerns of every mayor.

Education is workforce. Education is economic development. Education is crime. Education is poverty. Without an educated workforce, you can’t recruit businesses, you can’t maintain businesses, and you can’t grow your college number of graduates in your city. 

FW: When did we become aware of this as a community — specifically of the third-grade literacy issues?

BP: I don’t know that we are aware as a community. I mean, I’ve been aware. This isn’t new for me. I mean, my friends thought I would run for the school board, but I said, “No, we can be more effective from the outside in.”

I think when [Fort Worth Independent School District superintendent Kent] Scribner came and I started meeting, we started saying, “You’ve got to raise the awareness. You have to tell people.” I mean, this is public data. It’s out there. 

Everybody knew there were schools that were in trouble, but nobody had taken the time [how far Fort Worth schools were from the] benchmark. When we launched Read Fort Worth, we thought, “If we do nothing else, at least we’ll wake the community up to what’s happening with education.”

FW: If the 100% literacy by 2025 was the ambitious goal, what is the more realistic goal? Are we zeroing in on what it should be?

BP: We haven’t really revamped the goal. Right now, the immediate goal is to get all these kids back in the classroom. There’s a huge percentage of kids under third-grade age who are nowhere to be found. They’re just not in school. The flip end of that is to get counselors and help get these kids — early on in their middle school and high school career — on a path to go to college or to get a two-year certification.

Panther Island

FW: What’s the right word to use to describe the status of the Panther Island project right now?

BP: Well, the bridges are coming along nicely. And the bridges are all that the city actually had much control over. I don’t know, it’s hard to put one single word on it. It’s lack of funding. That’s what it is. It’s just stalled at the federal level on the funding side.

I’ve said for years, and it’s not real popular, but we’ve got to have a plan B. How do we address the fact that for nearly 20 years we have had almost no funding from the [federal government] for the flood control piece?

Now, the hope is, if this infrastructure bill goes through, there will be some money there. And there may very well be for flood control. So, it’s hard to describe.

FW: Critics often argue Panther Island is economic development, not flood control. From your perspective, what is it and why? And how did we get into this situation where we don’t agree on what it is?

BP: I don’t think you hear that as much anymore. I think 10 years ago that was a major complaint. In my opinion, it’s both. It’s hopefully flood control. Considering the growth we’ve had — particularly upstream on the Trinity — could be catastrophic if we have a major weather event.

But it’s also economic development. That’s the largest piece of land attached to any major city’s downtown in the nation. And think what that could do for the city. I mean, what’s wrong with flood control that also brings some economic development? 

FW: So, does the plan end up being market-driven in the end? Are we realistically going to be able to stick to that plan?

BP: That plan is now 15 to 18 years old. I mean, personally, I think it’s time for another look at that plan. I mean, right now, it seems to be apartments, or the developers are telling me apartments are what they’re penciling in. And you don’t want to fill the biggest developable piece downstream of apartments. And when some of that city zoning was put in place, it was done to protect our downtown that was just beginning to emerge. 

It’s probably time for all of us — the city, TRWD, and everybody concerned — to relook at what can be done down there. We need to bring some developers to the table and ask, “What can we put there that’ll be attractive? I mean, is it a corporate campus? Is it a combination?”

I mean, wouldn’t it be nice to have another beautiful café or two along the river?

Race Relations and Police

FW: Tensions were very high last year in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, which happened a few months after a Fort Worth police officer killed Atatiana Jefferson. Like all major cities, there were daily protests seeking accountability. I’ve heard differing opinions about the city’s response. In hindsight, would you have addressed the situation any differently?

BP: I don’t spend a lot of time looking back on regrets. I think you learn from what you do, and you hopefully get better at it. I’ve said before, my biggest regret was how we initially handled the Jacqueline Craig tragedy, which was two or three years ago. That was our first really big racial tension issue. I just didn’t think we were as prepared for it as we should’ve been. We learned a lot from that.

The tragic Atatiana Jefferson shooting, we did much better. But coming out of Jacqueline Craig, one of the good things that we did was to create the Race and Culture Task Force. They came forward with some valid recommendations, and most of those have been adopted. There’s 22 of them, and they’ve all been adopted. 

[The city’s] work on race relations didn’t just pop up when George Floyd or Atatiana Jefferson were killed. We had been working on it for some time. 

FW: Do you think Fort Worth has some work to do as far as race relations are concerned?

BP: I think most cities have some work to do. I don’t think we’re an exception. I think part of what Fort Worth does do well is that we tend to have more open dialogue. People tend to be more comfortable talking about it, and I think that’s escalated some of the headway we’ve made.

I don’t think race relations are ever going to change until everybody’s involved. The city can’t drive what happens in race relationships. We can convene, we can facilitate, but it’s got to be person to person, business to business, if you’re going to really change the culture of this country.

FW: I’ve sometimes heard the opposite. I know some locals feel the city can be passive and apathetic when it comes to understanding the dynamics of race relations. 

BP: I don’t know that that’s just Fort Worth. I think that’s all over. And it’s certainly something that needs to improve. But on the flip side of that, you have some cities that have had major rioting. And that’s really polarized people. In my opinion, the rioting is more damaging. I mean, clearly, they’re going to be damaging, but they also do harm with regard to race relations.

FW: But do you feel people had a right to protest after the killing of George Floyd?

BP: Absolutely. I mean, we have had numerous protests, and we’ve been fortunate, as a whole, they’ve been pretty quiet. People have been pretty accepting of them. I’ve been down with the protesters a couple times. Both [former police chief Ed] Kraus and [current police chief Neil] Noakes both have been. Everybody’s got the right to protest. This is America. But do it peacefully. Violence doesn’t do any good.

FW: So, speaking of Kraus and Noakes, what did you learn from Kraus that now maybe you’re applying to Noakes as police chief?

BP: They’re not the same person by any means, but they’re very much at the same vein. They’re both servant leaders. I remember early on when we brought Ed in as interim — before he was actually sworn in and confirmed — he said, “I want officers who [police with] a servant’s heart 99% of the time and a warrior’s heart 1% of the time.” In today’s world, that’s really what you’re looking for, and I think you get that with Neil, too.

And the beauty is, both of them came up through the ranks in the department, and they know this department, and they know the men and women who work here. They know the city. Neither one of them have ever been the least bit shy about going out and sitting down with anybody for a cup of coffee. They’re more the people’s chief than the chief of the people. Does that make sense? I mean, you don’t want a chief who’s in an ivory tower. Much like you don’t want a mayor who’s in an ivory tower.

COVID-19

FW: Take us back to the formation of the regional response to COVID-19. What did that look like?

BP: Oh, gosh. There’s been so many ebbs and flows with regard to COVID-19 over the last, what are we, 14 months in now? It’s hard to remember. 

The governor, early on in the pandemic, put this back in the laps of mayors. He said to particularly the big-city mayors — because the smaller cities tend to follow the lead of the bigger cities — “I’m going to leave this up to y’all.” Within a couple hours, I was on a Zoom call with the mayors from the state’s 15 largest cities, and within 24 hours we had issued a shutdown ordinance.

That sent the right message. 

But I think it became apparent that people don’t stay in just Fort Worth. They go back and forth to Dallas, or between Keller and Mansfield, or Burleson. And maybe you have lunch somewhere other than Fort Worth today, even though you live here. So, it was critical that we get everybody at the table. And the North Texas Commission, which the mayor of Irving and I co-chair, helped coordinate that. And the regional response, I think, has been very good. 

In Tarrant County, it’s a much better regional approach. Many years ago, there was a big-city mayors’ group, and it had fallen by the wayside. And 10 years ago, because I had been president of the Tax Assessors Association, and I liked collaborating with other people in my field, we resurrected that big-city mayors’ group. So that made the regional approach a whole lot easier. That made it easier to get everybody on the same page.

FW: Did we make any mistakes in our approach? What did we learn that we can apply to next time?

BP: Well, we haven’t done our postmortem of COVID yet because we’re still in the thick of it, but I think there’s always room for improvement. One thing we did learn is that people are really hungry for information when something like that hits, and we did Facebook Live every afternoon at either 5:30 p.m. or 6 p.m., and we would have a variety of guests from the hospitals, or county health, or CDC to share information. And we got to where we’d have 50,000 to 60,000 people who’d turn it on and watch. 

One thing I learned is that people want very concise, very honest, and open information, and they want to trust whom they’re getting their information from. They don’t want a lot of hysterics. They don’t want to see somebody arguing with their medical director. It’s like that old saying, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

And we were brutally honest with people. But people seemed to like that steady hand. And they seemed to like the fact that their mayors were re-tweeting information, or their mayors were saying, “We’re on calls with the county judge and the governor.” And I think knowing that we were all working collaboratively made people feel better.

It goes back to partisanship. They didn’t see the response, locally, as being partisan. I think they saw a lot more of that at the federal level, but they were looking for a steady hand here.

FW: With regard to Texas reopening and Gov. Abbott’s decisions, I know that you and Judge Glen Whitley thought that might’ve been a little fast. How is it going?

BP: I think it’s going pretty well. Our numbers are pretty good. I mean, starting last week and this week, there’s been a little bump up in numbers, but basically our numbers are not bad. Our hospitalizations are staying stable. I haven’t seen today’s numbers yet, but, overall, they’ve declined dramatically.

FW: Do we have any projections locally from the health authority about vaccination rate? What we can expect before we start seeing things leveling off?

BP: Our city-appointed medical director, Brandon Bennet, says that when you reach about 85% who either have had it or have been vaccinated, that’s when you hit herd immunity. And the estimate we had was that we were currently pushing 60%.

FW: What would you say to people who are resistant, for whatever reason, to getting vaccinated.

BP: Get the damn shot. Pardon my French.

The Final Stretch

FW: What are some aspects of the job you feel you underestimated during your tenure as mayor?

BP: That’s an interesting question. I will tell you, somebody asked, “What are you most shocked by?” I never would’ve dreamed ... I can’t go anywhere without people wanting to take a picture. I mean, that’s silly, but it’s true. I’ve taken millions of pictures. It’s a nice honor, but it’s kind of shocking.

In addition to that, probably the time commitment. But, the time I put into is of my own making. I mean, I’m a bit of a workaholic. I love people and I love being out among them, and I want to give it my all. When I start a project, you’re going to get 180% of what I’m willing to give.

Working with council is always a challenge. Not a challenge, it’s always rewarding, but it can be a challenge sometimes. You have your ups and downs, and you’ve got nine strong personalities, and I’m just one vote. But I pretty much knew that going into this. 

After I was in office for six months, somebody said, “You’ve had a dozen split votes that weren’t unanimous. Are you concerned about that?” I said, “No. I never went into this thinking that I was going to coerce my council people into voting one way on any given issue.” My goal was to understand why they’re voting the way they are and to make certain that they’re comfortable and that my vote is based on what I see is best for the city.

I’ve never been one to think that you manage votes. I mean, it’s been done in the past and everybody knows that. For a long time, Fort Worth had mostly unanimous votes. I mean, if you’re a council member and you’re busy in your own district, you’re going to look to the mayor to tell you what they think is best for the city, and you may say, “I don’t agree with that.” But you’re also liable to say, “Okay, I understand that, and I’ll vote with you.”

FW: Is that good though?

BP: Yes. It’s a very collegial council, and you don’t want a council that’s always on the same page with everything. We have very open discussions about things, and a lot of times we understand each other, and they’ll vote the same way.

I think the fear is that you might get more parochial council members who were myopic about their district. And for really good governance, you need everybody thinking about what’s best for the city as a whole. If you are a council member, you’re going to weigh things from the lens of your district, and you should. But you shouldn’t fail to look at how it impacts other pieces. And the mayor has to look at how it impacts the entire city as a whole.

FW: What is the one thing you wish you had accomplished that remains?

BP: I don’t think, looking back, there isn’t any one singular thing. I’d love to have seen Panther Island a little further along. I’d love to have seen education a little further along. But there isn’t any one major thing. I looked back at my swearing-in speech — which was my first State of the City essentially— and what we said we were going to do then, we have pretty much accomplished.

I’m very proud of that. The four or five really big initiatives, Fit Worth, Steer Fort Worth, Read Fort Worth, are all stood up on their own and operating on their own and doing well. And I think you’ll see continued growth with them if Read Fort Worth doesn’t ... they’ll stay along for a while, but they’re under the T3 umbrella, so at least the education initiative will continue.

FW: When thinking about presidents, some people sort of categorize them as wartime presidents or those who had to deal with specific crises. I sometimes think of you a mayor who dealt with a number of crises, especially in the last year. How would you grade your response to these numerous crises?

BP: I would grade our response to the pandemic probably an A-, B+. Somewhere in there.

Race relations, I’d give us a B-. Maybe a B. It depends on what part of it you’re looking at. And yeah, I’ve got a reputation for being … not a wartime president but for being a fixer. I mean, people have forever said, “You’re passionate enough, fix it.” I try never to think I’m smart enough to fix anything on my own, but I’m pretty good at getting input from people and knowing what door to open to try to get something going.

We fixed the tax office, and we fixed the pension here, and we fixed the city’s budget. And hopefully, we’ll get COVID fixed.

I guess that’s kind of my forte.

FW: And what is one word of advice you have for the incoming mayor?

BP: Strap on your boots. It’s going to be a ride.