A decision made by city leaders to remove street sign toppers honoring civil rights activist César Chávez may have violated the standard process for such actions, two Fort Worth City Council members said Tuesday.
Council members Chris Nettles and Elizabeth Beck said they agree with the decision to remove Chávez’s honorary designation in response to a New York Times investigation detailing allegations that Chávez groomed and sexually abused girls and women, including Dolores Huerta, with whom he co-founded the United Farm Workers.
However, the two questioned how the action was authorized as the issue didn’t go to the City Council for approval until March 31 — almost two weeks after the street toppers were removed. The decision was approved unanimously on Tuesday.
Removing the street toppers before a formal vote sets a precedent for when and how city officials respond to controversial allegations, Beck and Nettles argued.
“I shouldn’t be sitting on my couch seeing signs removed off the city of Fort Worth without my knowledge,” Nettles said. “I’m very disappointed in the way this played out, and I think we’re setting a (precedent) on this dais that one person on this dais can make things change in the city of Fort Worth when it requires 11 votes.”
Council member Carlos Flores, who initiated the street toppers’ removal as they were in his Northside district, explained from the dais that he felt it was important to take swift action after the allegations about Chávez became public March 18.
Flores contacted City Manager Jay Chapa, Assistant City Manager William Johnson and Mayor Mattie Parker, who he said all agreed to instruct city staff to remove the sign toppers. The next day, Flores held a press conference announcing the signs’ removal.
“When new information calls into question whether an honoree reflects the city of Fort Worth's values, this council has a duty to act,” Flores said Tuesday. He later added, “Honorary street names are not merely symbolic gestures — they are public endorsements of character, conduct and legacy.”
The street toppers are in city storage, Chapa told council members, adding that staff “kept them, in case the City Council wanted them to put back up.”
“It did not remove the designation of the street — it just removed the street toppers themselves,” Chapa said of the decision.
The city manager emphasized that concerns about the process used to remove the toppers is “duly noted” but maintained that he and Johnson used their professional judgment to make the decision.
“Was it your professional judgment that put the topper on the street?” Nettles asked.
Chapa replied, “No, sir. I wasn’t here.”
City Council members voted unanimously in 2020 to honor Chávez and Huerta with the street sign toppers in Flores’ district. The sign topper honoring Huerta on Ephriham Avenue remains in place.
Council members should have had a “robust discussion” with opportunities for community members to weigh in about the controversy before staff acted to remove the signs, Beck said.
“Anything that requires a council vote to do should require a council vote to undo, regardless of professional opinion or not,” she said.
Not all council-approved actions require council approval to undo, City Attorney Leann Guzman told the Fort Worth Report. She did not directly answer whether the council was required to vote before removing the street sign toppers, writing via email that “a case-by-case” analysis is required.
“The City Manager’s Office was correct in this instance to save the signs and not consider the removal permanent until council acted,” Guzman wrote.
Fort Worth honors community leaders, historical figures and civil rights icons with street sign toppers across the city.
Last year, council members approved one in east Fort Worth honoring Shirley Knox Benton, the first Black woman principal at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, and one in the Near Southside honoring Grammy-winning artist Leon Bridges.
Beck described it as a “very slippery slope” to remove Chávez’s sign without council approval, although she agreed that it should be removed.
She warned that it sets a precedent for other council members to “unilaterally” call staff to remove honorary designations they don’t like, questioning what would happen if a council member wanted to remove the street sign topper honoring Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman shot and killed in her mother’s home by a Fort Worth police officer in 2019.
The decision to remove Chávez’s sign topper comes as council members ask Fort Worth voters to amend the city charter to give the city manager more autonomy on administrative changes without council’s approval — as long as those changes don’t contradict the charter, which serves as the playbook for city government. Early voting for the May 2 election opens April 20.
Flores noted that Fort Worth operates as a city manager-led form of government, which gives the city manager broad administrative authority to manage the city’s daily operations.
Several community members reached out to Flores personally, he said, and told him that keeping the street toppers up would be a “bad reflection on the city” and a disservice to women, especially Latinas.
He explained that he didn’t have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with each of his colleagues, as many council members were out of town at a conference at the time.
However, Flores said he copied each council member in an email to city management about the issue. When none responded, he “assumed it was fairly clear” that there was no opposition.
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org.
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This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
