Richard W. Rodriguez
Gyna Bivens walked away from City Hall in May satisfied that she had left District 5 a better place than she had found it 12 years ago.
The six-term City Council member and Mayor Pro Tem elected not to seek another term on the dais. She was succeeded by Deborah Peoples, the former candidate for mayor and Tarrant County judge who defeated five challengers for the open seat.
Plenty of public servants claim to “tell it like it is,” but Bivens has earned her reputation by actually doing so in language that is plainspoken, unfiltered, and unequivocal.
Don’t worry about wondering where you stand with the 70-year-old Bivens, a former TV news reporter and a 1973 graduate of Dunbar High School who grew up in Stop Six. She will tell you.
District 5 includes Fort Worth’s historic Stop Six and Handley neighborhoods and extends north to Mosier Valley, site of the settlement of the first freed slaves in Texas, and east to State Highway 10 and across State Highway 360.
“Well, in spite of me cursing like a sailor, I am a woman of faith, and I prayed to the Lord to let me know when it was time to go,” Bivens says from her now former office at new City Hall. “I had talked about leaving in 2021, and my mother — closer to God than I am, I guess —said, ‘No, you’re not done yet.’ So, I stayed another term.
“I felt comfortable leaving now. I think I’ve got some tangible examples of improvements that I brought to the district.”
Not to mention, she tells me, while pointing to the hallways where other council members also reside, “It’s getting crazy around here.”
Bivens’ service has been consequential.
She has been a leader in development advances in Stop Six, including Cavile Place, an affordable housing complex, and Hughes House, a mixed-used development named in honor of former Dunbar basketball coach Robert Hughes. Both of those projects were boosted by a $35 million federal grant, essentially personally delivered by Ben Carson, then head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Trinity Lakes development is a sprawling development constructed by Ken Newell. It will also serve as a transit hub. Progress is being made and construction begun on Lancaster, a major thoroughfare long neglected in District 5.
“She was pretty focused in what she wanted to accomplish,” Mayor Mattie Parker says. “And as a result, I know that the district is better off for it.”
Homes are also again being constructed in Stop Six.
The council member made somewhat famous for vowing never to be embarrassed by what she didn’t know, asked a simple question: Why are homes not being built in Stop Six?
“I didn’t know,” she says.
Historic overlay zoning had pushed builders into a corner, deterring new construction.
“I started talking to different builders, asking if they would be interested,” Bivens says. “They said, ‘Yeah, but I’m not going to build a house with a detached garage and a big ol’ porch because some fool thinks that’s the way it’s supposed to be.’ We were able to overturn it, and a building boom followed.”
Said Parker: “It made a huge difference in a short amount of time. She had to put together the right coalition of people to understand why she was doing it at the time, and it was really successful.”
Bivens comes from a line of Baptist preachers. She is a member of Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church. Her father, Roy W. Bivens Sr., a Baptist preacher, founded Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church on Ramey. Following his death, Bivens’ mother, Betty Joyce Bivens, wanted to return to the church of her youth. She reminds me that there is another Mount Olive Baptist Church, but it’s in Arlington.
“I call it the snobbish one,” she jokes. “I’m a rowdy Baptist. My mother wanted to go back to Mount Olive. That’s where she wanted to go back, so, that’s where I am. I call it Driving Ms. Daisy.”
Her grandfather, J.D. Green, was a preacher at True Light Missionary Baptist Church in Riverside. He later moved to Dangerfield, Texas, and was part of the city charter committee there.
She says she brought her upbringing and her faith to the office.
“I pray over every agenda, at least most of them anyway,” Bivens says. “I try not to get too wrapped up in myself, but rather trying to do what people say they want done. I don’t like the all-knowing council model because when I came in, I saw council members just kind of disregard what people would complain about, especially zoning cases. They’d say, ‘No, no, this is going to be good.’ Well, that’s not me. If my constituents felt one way, they knew I was going to bring that to the dais.”
Unlike her position on the City Council, Bivens is staying on her day job. She serves as president and executive director of North Texas LEAD, a nonprofit created by CEOs to recruit top diverse talent.
Bivens’ first taste of City Hall was in San Antonio as a television reporter for KMOL. She has a degree from North Texas in radio/TV/film. She moved over to the other side as a public information officer for the city of San Antonio.
Bivens moved home to work for Oncor as a communications person. It was while there that then-District 5 Councilman Frank Moss asked her to serve on the Board of Adjustment. “The Board of Adjustment will change your life,” she says. Moss also appointed her to the board of Trinity Metro, which she eventually chaired.
Moss, Bivens says, “is the one who made me.” She eventually unmade Moss, challenging him for his council seat in 2013. She received 92 more votes than Moss in a three-way race in the May election and squeaked by him by literally a few votes in the runoff.
“She’s not afraid to tell you exactly what she’s thinking. And to some people that may have been off-putting or confusing. I always found it to be really refreshing, honestly, because you always knew where she stood. I’ve always loved having her as Mayor Pro Tem, and I think we got a lot of great work done together.”
Asked if she has thought about a legacy, Bivens scoffs at the suggestion saying she was having too much fun doing the work than to worry about building a legacy.
“I’m just not wired that way,” she says. “I wish I had been in some instances.”
Pressed to give herself a grade for her 12 years on council, she is unreserved.
“I’ve done a damn good job. And I know it.”