Cones before communication? Fort Worth wants better construction project alerts

Fort Worth leaders are considering new permit requirements, tougher fines and automated alerts to give residents and businesses more notice before construction begins.

For some Fort Worth residents and business owners, the first sign that a construction project is coming can be the cones appearing outside their door.

It’s a frustration NBC 5 has heard before from people impacted by construction projects across the city.

“It was just one day there was just a bunch of cones out here,” Frezko Taco Spot owner Eliazar Salinas told NBC 5 back in August about construction along Eighth Avenue.

And it turns out neighbors and business owners aren’t the only ones sometimes caught off guard.

Fort Worth City Council Member Elizabeth Beck said council offices can also be left scrambling to figure out what work is happening and who is responsible.

“Oftentimes we’re left going hunting down from staff, you know, which utility it was, or which construction project it is and then, you know, kind of have to start backwards from there,” Beck said.

Beck said better communication would allow her office to provide answers when residents call asking why a street is blocked or why construction cones have appeared without any visible work underway.

Right now, for non-city projects, the city says it relies on the companies doing the work to provide those notifications. But the scale presents a challenge: Fort Worth handles nearly 8,000 permits a year with just eight city staff members monitoring them, according to information presented by Michael Owen of Transportation and Public Works.

“We chase around the bad actors; that’s really all we can do, that’s all we have the resources to do,” Owen said at the city's last work session on Oct. 27.

But he said they are now considering ways to build stronger communication requirements into the permitting process.

Owen said that includes requiring additional outreach for projects and expanding the area of notification could also be expanded from 200 to 500 feet around the project area.

“If it’s on an arterial or collector, it’s in a hospital district, it’s downtown, we want to put requirements for them to reach out to the council, school districts,” Owen said.

Other possibilities include requiring companies to provide proof that notifications were sent, increasing fines when requirements aren’t followed and using the city’s existing software to automatically alert city staff about projects.

"Looking at ways we can implement automatic systems in the software that we already have to see how those notifications can go out to staff," Beck explained.

Beck said she is also pushing for additional staffing to help the city stay on top of the volume of construction permits.

The goal is straightforward: give residents and businesses a heads-up before the roadblocks go up, so the cones aren't the first clue that construction is coming.