Starting Oct. 1, Fort Worth’s community centers will be entirely managed by the city’s parks and recreation department. 

In the past, some community centers were managed by the parks department while others were managed by neighborhood services, said Monique Hill, the incoming assistant director for the parks department. This restructuring will allow the parks department to deliver recreation at community centers and give neighborhood services time to focus on its mission of providing resources to vulnerable communities.

The decision, which will take effect in the 2025 financial year, came from a need to be “uniform” in how the city provides services, Hill said.

“For both sides, it’s a win,” she said. “It’s kind of hard for a manager to really make sure that they are able to stay on top of both things. Neighborhood services expertise is in service delivery and making sure that they grow human capital, so now they’re able to focus on that.”

Out of the 23 community centers in the city, neighborhood services managed seven. This included the Andrew “Doc” Session Community Center, Como Community Center, Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, Northside Community Center, North Tri-Ethnic Community Center, Southside Community Center and Worth Heights Community Center. 

Kacey Bess, the director for the neighborhood services department, said the seven community centers are part of the Community Action Partners program that has provided services to economically disadvantaged individuals, families and older adults since 2015. Such services include HVAC assistance, veterans programs, financial assistance, utility service assistance, youth leadership programs and more.

The restructuring doesn’t mean these services will disappear, Hill said. Instead, neighborhood services will continue to work and manage these programs, while the parks department will manage the recreational aspect, she said. 

“We still want people to come to the centers,” Hill said. “That doesn’t mean the parks department itself has to manage the service part, because that’s not our expertise. We want to leave that with the people that do it and know it well, which would be neighborhood services. For our customer side or the client side, there’s really no difference.”

By allowing the parks department to manage the community centers, the neighborhood services department can focus and improve in providing services to residents and the community, Bess said.

“We’re not the fun department like parks and recreation, their focus is on recreation and providing recreational programs to residents,” Bess said. “That’s not a core service of what we do. We really do focus more on how we can improve the environment for our residents, whether it’s from a housing perspective, social services or a financial perspective.”

City Council members adopted their 2025 budget Sept. 17 following a series of budget workshops and a public hearing. The City’s new fiscal year starts Oct. 1. Hill has already set a goal for the next year as her department takes over all community center management. 

“My hope is to improve any programming that we have currently, really give staff the time to really focus on doing some of these things that the other facilities provide,” Hill said.

Kevin Vu is a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and contributor to the Fort Worth Report.